


To Summon the Dark

by EnduringParadox



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Noir, Blow Jobs, Detective!David, Doggy Style, Eldritch!Diarmuid, Eventual Smut, Horror, M/M, Rimming, Romance, Some gore in the first chapter but that's probably going to be it, a bit of alternate history as well, playing fast and loose with history, smut in chapter 6 and chapter 8, the smut is going to get weird at some point because one half of the couple is an eldritch entity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26807692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnduringParadox/pseuds/EnduringParadox
Summary: "...Can you tell me your name?"The young man whispers something incoherent.“I’m so sorry, honey, I didn’t get that.”“D’midh.”“Diarmuid?”A hesitant nod.“Okay. Okay, Diarmuid..."--------------An Eldritch Noir AU (it's an odd one). Private detective David is hired to find a couple's son, who's gotten mixed up in some cult led by a man called Frère Geraldus. At an abandoned hotel David finds the cultists dead and a beautiful, injured young man hiding from the carnage. David makes it his new task to get Diarmuid help and get him back to his family, but as he learns more about the cult and Diarmuid he realizes that this might be even more difficult than he realized.
Relationships: Brother Diarmuid/The Mute
Comments: 97
Kudos: 55





	1. The Arrival

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FolleDeJoie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FolleDeJoie/gifts).



> Finally starting the Discord Eldritch Noir AU. I hope to have this finished before November/Nanowrimo, but even if I slip on the schedule this fic will definitely be finished after all that is over.
> 
> This is a pretty indulgent fic as well (aren't they all), so it's a mashup of eldritch/noir/historical/romance/horror. Kind of an experiment. Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Also, most of the gore is in this first chapter, there will be smut, and the smut is going to get monster-fuckery at some point. Just laying it all out here now.

There’s a man who goes by the name of Frère Geraldus who is an honest-to-God cult leader.

David isn’t a man to mince words. The guy’s found a niche in convincing impressionable, weak-willed people that he is the chosen one, their savior. A man who can commune with the beings in other dimensions, god or monsters or maybe both—David had tried to skim his writings early on in the investigation. Rambling, bloviating nonsense, filled with delusions of grandeur and a smug kind of self-assurance you only ever really saw in absolute assholes, all flapping gums and big talk and, when push came to shove, glass jaws.

He wouldn’t have ever been on David’s radar had it not been for this job. Amazing, all the different kinds of people around. He was always learning something new when on a case. Like looking under a fallen log and watching all the insects and other creepy-crawlies slither and skitter about. Shining a light on everything hidden in the dark.

But the person he really needs to find is a man by the name of Oliver Ward. His parents are paying David good money for information, any information. Frère Geraldus’s group has gone worryingly silent in these past few weeks and the Wards are frantic and filled with dread.

“Something’s happened,” Mr. Ward had told David as he handed him half of his payment. “I don’t know what, but I know it’s not good. Something’s happened.”

Something had. A big meeting. Oliver Ward wasn’t the type of man to leave a journal, but his apartment had been filled with enough clues to allow David to piece together a lead.

There’d been a collection of Geraldus’s writings, for one. Words and phrases, a mix of French and English, carefully highlighted and neatly underlined with Ward’s own clumsy translations penned in the margins.

Had to be better ways to learn another language, David thought, than joining a cult. Not that he had chosen a much better path—he’d learned German and French while getting shot at all throughout the European theater.

Been a while since he’s translated anything, not that he was ever great at it. He’d read the guidebooks they’d sent out to help the American forces integrate better with the locals—language and culture. But though he could read signs and muddle through the occasional book David had been just as taciturn in French as he was in English.

But he’s pleased to find that while the _meaning_ of Geraldus’s ramblings make little to no sense, he at least understands the words themselves.

_Dans la chair, dans le sang, dans les os_ , reads one phrase. _Into flesh, into blood, into bone._

Another, written to be more elegant or poetic: _O! Vous vaste, calme, belle sombre._

_O! You vast, calm, beautiful dark._

One page, scrawled with a one single, repeating phrase, needs no translation. _Communion, communion, **communion**_.

And a date. Whatever was happening was going to happen _soon_.

Ward had been living an ascetic life. Little to nothing in the fridge. A neatly made bed. A closet of well-kept clothes. An old family portrait—the Wards, younger, happier—turned face down on the desk. Hidden in the back of the frame David found a carefully labeled map. A note to his parents, perhaps? Letting them know where they could find him? And what, exactly, will there be to find?

* * *

The drive to the hotel is long and disconcerting. Far past the city limits and into the countryside, but besides a diner and gas station and a few ramshackle houses there’s _nothing_ about. Half an hour after grabbing a quick cup of coffee David glances around the road in search for a landmark, anything, even a—a silo, or something, but it’s empty of human life. Not wild like the woods where he spent his childhood, with babbling brooks and the rustle of leaves underfoot. More like the empty towns he’d traveled through during the war, buildings standing empty like cracked dollhouses, their inhabitants having fled from the dangers of battle. But that had been because of shells and mortars and bullets. Here, on this bright autumn day with nothing around him but the road and vast expanses of dead, drying grass there’s not just a lack of human touch, but of _all_ life.

The hotel appears like a mirage, the only structure around for miles and miles. Five stories tall, a beacon of oddity. What was the use of a hotel so far out in the middle of nowhere? But the diner’s owner had told him the empty locale had been the point: easier to see and hear the law coming up the road during Prohibition.

He drives up a now overgrown path, through a rusted gate, and parks under a gnarled oak tree. There are other cars around, huddled together at the side of the building. Some have been there longer than others, dusted with pollen and stray leaves, while others are appear to have arrived more recently.

There’s Oliver Ward’s vehicle. He peers into the windshield. Cigarette stubs still smoking in an ashtray on the dashboard, embers dimly glowing. The scent wafts from the slightly rolled down windows. A large gathering, and probably still all in the building—but he can hear nothing but the overgrown grass rustling in the wind.

David makes his way to the entrance. The door opens easily, as if he were expected.

A swanky place, once, the diner’s owner had said. Dances and liquor and pretty young men and women flitting about marble floors with martinis in hand. But the place is empty, now. Didn’t survive the Depression. Peeled paint and gold leaf doors are flaking away to reveal rotted wood. The insides are stripped bare, a home only for whatever wildlife chewed or burrowed through the walls or the occasional vagrant. David can see the evidence of travelers—areas cleared to lay a bedroll, the remnants of campfires.

Good for them, whoever they were. At least the place is still useful for some things. He knows what it’s like to be on the road, desperate for a place to stay. But anyone who’s been here before can honestly say that they spent the night at a five-star hotel.

It’s still too quiet. His footsteps echo through the foyer, sharp against the marble and creaking against the once-polished wood. Where is everyone? David moves past the front desk and up the grand staircase, following a trail of footprints in the disturbed dust. There’s moss growing along the steps, bits and pieces missing from the railing.

He follows the trail, one hand on his holster.

Something’s happened here. David’s uneasy. It’s the same feeling he had before he and his squad were ambushed on patrol. Anderson dead immediately, Gorman gut shot, dying slow on the ground as he tried to push his intestines back into his stomach. At first he thinks the memory’s overwhelmed him—that stench of blood and shit, of _death_ —but no, it grows stronger with every step he takes.

It’s emanating from the ballroom. The door is ornate, massive. A puddle of congealed, browning blood—the color of rust—seeps from underneath it.

Jesus.

This does not bode well. Not at all.

David takes a deep breath and gags. When he tries to push the doors open they catch on something, stuck fast. He’s got a pretty good idea of what’s blocking them. He slams his shoulder against the door, feels it budge just a little. He slams against it again. And again. And again.

He pants, massages his shoulder. He’s going to be feeling that tomorrow.

Once more, now. He’s never been a man to know when to give up. David squares his shoulders and charges at the doors.

The raw stench as he stumbles through is overwhelming. Bile rises in his throat. He turns to vomit and spots exactly what was blocking the doors. Corpses, as he guessed, but mutilated beyond recognition and his imagination. Missing heads and limbs and chunks of flesh and bone, not cut or hacked away but almost— _ripped_ , torn sinew hanging in strings like the ends of frayed fabric. He whirls around, hand clasped over his nose and mouth, and sees, through watering eyes, a decayed ballroom littered with mangled dead.

They’re scattered around like broken puppets. There are streaks of blood staining the walls, as if the bodies hit with a great force and then slid down to settle in a pool of gore. Specks of stuff that David knows to be bits of bone and brain are stuck to the ceiling.

There’s a smudged pentagram in the middle of the floor painted in _gold_ , of all colors, still bright and slightly wet amidst the carnage.

What _was_ this? A peal of incredulous laughter peals from David’s throat. This can’t have been a—a mass suicide. The sheer violence of it, the scattered limbs and crushed skulls and ceiling and walls and floor decorated with remnants of slaughter. He’s never seen anything like this, not even during the war.

This is a nightmare. Jesus.

David runs a hand through his hair as he takes in the scene before him. What the fuck is he supposed to do now? If Oliver Ward was in this room he’d be—God, even his parents probably wouldn’t be able to identify enough of him to piece him back together. And the only telephone line was about an hour back at that diner. Not that anyone here is going anywhere.

A small sob startles him. _Fuck_ , he hadn’t even thought to check if someone was still alive. Wide-eyed, David warily makes his way to the source of the noise, stepping over bodies and avoiding blood as best he can. Near a broken window, behind an old, dusty, tattered curtain, is a small, trembling, crying figure. David stops, utterly shocked, when the most beautiful person David’s ever seen peeks from behind the material. It’s obvious he’s in distress—he’s pale, so pale David can see line of veins underneath his freckled skin, his mop of dark curls are tangled and mussed, his large, honey-brown eyes wide with fear and filled with tears. He shivers and sobs, clutching the curtain around him like a blanket, and David realizes with horror that the young man is completely naked and that his hands and feet and knees are stained with blood—he crawled to this hiding space. His skin is smeared with the stuff.

“What—what are you _doing_ here, sweetheart?” David asks. He shrugs off his coat and presents it to the young man so that he can cover himself, but he merely stares up at him, face tearstained and body shaking like a leaf.

He whispers, “Don’t know. They brought me here.” He inclines his head the smudged pentagram and then his lower lip trembles and he breaks into another heart-wrenching sob, clutching at the curtain.

Christ, they _brought_ him here? Kidnapped him? The poor thing doesn’t look well at all—how long have they had him?

David swallows. “Are you hurt, sweetheart?”

“Yes—they tried to _hurt me_.” He holds out pale, lovely wrists, purpled with bruises in the shape of fingerprints and stretches out a long leg marred by a nasty gash. Someone came at him with a knife.

Disgust and anger wells up inside David. What was the young man’s role here—a human sacrifice? If so, something’s obviously gone wrong. He’s the only one left alive. Or maybe the ritual they were performing went horribly right, save for this last, beautiful, shivering witness. Either way, fuck Frère Geraldus and fuck Oliver Ward and fuck the rest of these cultists. If they wanted to gouge and rip themselves to death for some bullshit about eternity and voids and other dimensional beings, that was their choice. But this pretty young man should never have been brought into their moronic, dangerous bullshit.

David soothes him as best he can, gently wrapping the coat around him. “Hey, hey. You’re all right now. I promise. I’m here. I’ve got you. I’ll protect you.”

Doe eyes, the young man’s got big, brown doe eyes. “Y-you?” he asks, eyes wide and hopeful. The shaking stops as he snuggles into the coat.

“My name’s David. I’m a private detective. I was sent to—“ He stops. To find a man who hadn’t been as sweet as his parents said, David thinks, eyeing Diarmuid’s delicate, bruised, bloody figure. Kidnapping and attempted ritual homicide, _Christ_. “Can I pick you up? We’re going to go to my car, and then I’ll take you to the hospital and call the police. Can you tell me your name?

The young man whispers something incoherent.

“I’m so sorry, honey, I didn’t get that.”

“D’midh.”

“Diarmuid?”

A hesitant nod.

“Okay. Okay, Diarmuid, I’m going to pick you up now.”

At first Diarmuid whimpers in fright but as David gently lifts him bridal style he gives a little sigh and clings to him, hiding his face in his neck. “David,” he murmurs in a soft, sweet voice. It makes David’s heart swell and his mouth go dry.

He rasps, “Yeah, Diarmuid. I got you. Don’t worry.” David shifts, slightly, to make Diarmuid more comfortable and so as not to jostle his injured leg. He’s so light. He wonders again how long Diarmuid’s been in the cult’s possession. Did he arrive in one of the many vehicles parked near the building? Where did he come from? Somewhere out in the country? The city? Out of state? There had to be someone out there missing him—someone has to care for him.

God, he’s so easy to carry. It’s like he was made for David to hold. He can feel Diarmuid’s heart beating, fluttering like a frightened rabbit at first and then slowing, placid and calm, as David makes his way back to the hotel’s entrance. It steadies David, too. He needs to focus on getting Diarmuid help and not the horror that lay behind them. “I’ve got you,” he says again.

There’s an extra change of clothes in the trunk of his car—he can make a small bed for Diarmuid in the backseat, keep him comfortable during the drive. Shit, he doesn’t have any idea where the hospital is. Do they even have one out here? The drive back to the city is hours away. Maybe the diner. Set up there, ask to use the phone, get Diarmuid a new change of clothes and find a first aid kit and call an ambulance.

But then it turns out he needn’t have worried about when to call the authorities, because when they finally get back to the lobby there’s a commotion outside. Shouting, the rumble of car engines, the beacon from the police vehicles—that harsh, rotating red light.

Diarmuid cries out when it seeps through the windows and the cracks in the walls and hits face. He screws his eyes shut, sobbing into David’s chest. “David, it’s too _bright_. It’s hurting me.”

Shit, he’s sensitive to the light, too—what did they _do_ to him? Will the daylight be too much for him? David hugs Diarmuid closers to his chest so that the young man can more easily hide his face. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Just hold on tight to me, okay? I’ve got you.”

Someone shouts from a megaphone, “Geraldus! Come out! You’re surrounded!”

What the Hell? Frère Geraldus is probably dead in that room with the rest of those motherfuckers. And how did the police the police know the cult was here? And, more importantly, how did they find out _now_ , of all times, when all the members are newly dead?

“Geraldus!” The man on the megaphone shouts once more. “Come out!” His voice echoes around the empty lobby.

Diarmuid whimpers again. “I _hate_ it! It’s loud and it’s bright and it’s _hurting me! David!_ ”

Jesus, this is a clusterfuck. Diarmuid is just getting more and more agitated now, a crying, blood-covered bundle in his arms. In a desperate attempt to soothe Diarmuid’s pain David presses a kiss to his forehead. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting. You’re doing so well. Just hold on to me.”

“ _Geraldus_!”

David kicks the entrance door open, shifting as he walks onto the front steps to shield Diarmuid from the worst of the noise and the light. “I’m _NOT_ Geraldus, goddamnit! _Fuck_!” It looks like the whole fucking county police force is there in the lobby courtyard, staring at him with dumbfuck, dumbfounded expressions. “They’re all fucking dead in there—killed each other, I don’t know. We need to get _him_ help.” At their slack-jawed stares, David grits his teeth and says, “I’m a private detective. My badge is in my coat.” And his coat is on the tearful, bloody, naked young man in his arms.

“Jesus,” one of the men says, “Is he okay?”

Whatever is left of his patience is lost in an instant. “Does he look okay? Get me to a fucking hospital. **_Now_**.”

There are emergency blankets in the police cars. Someone collects them and arranges a comfortable seat for Diarmuid. David lays him gently across the makeshift bed and buttons the coat to preserve his modesty. Then he gently props Diarmuid’s injured leg and presses a small towel to it. “Try and keep pressure on it, sweetheart.”

Diarmuid nods, but when a cop tells David to follow them in his own car he wails, fearful and absolutely heartbroken, “ _No_! David! Don’t leave me!”

That settles it. It’s Diarmuid who needs his help right now, Diarmuid who needs protection. David tosses his keys to the cop. “I’m riding with him. _You_ can follow in the my car.” The man looks as though he wants to argue, but then he sees the expression on David’s face and quickly scurries to the vehicle.

He slides into the front seat and looks back at Diarmuid, who is pressing the towel to his bleeding leg as instructed. “They’re driving us to the hospital. You’re going to be okay, Diarmuid.”

The young man turns his head ever so slightly and gives him a small smile, the first that David’s seen from him. “I know, David,” he says, softly, “Because you’ve got me.”

He can’t help but smile back. “That’s right. Not going anywhere.”

Fucking ritual death cults. That’s over now, at least, once he tells the Wards what their son has been up to. And then he can work on getting Diarmuid back to his family. Someone’s got to be missing him. Someone’s got to be looking for him.


	2. The Hospital

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David and Diarmuid make it to the hospital. While Diarmuid recovers from his ordeal, David takes care of some business.

The police car’s radio crackles to life every so often as those who remain behind at the hotel wander out to their own vehicle to give dazed, horrified updates. The driver grows tenser with each comment, his knuckles white as he grips the steering wheel, occasionally glancing in the rearview mirror to look at Diarmuid, now silent with sheer exhaustion in the back seat.

_“Jesus Christ. I don’t even think—we’re going to have to store them somewhere else. The coroner’s office isn’t going have room for them all.”_

_“Thank God it’s fall—imagine trying to put them back together during the summer. Smell alone would knock you out. What a fucking mess.”_

“ _This was ungodly. Pentagram in the middle of the floor. Satanism, clear as day. Least all they killed was each other. No real loss_.”

But David’s read Geraldus’s rambling doctrines. It’s not God and Satan he’s preoccupied with, but other beings from other planes of existence. Colossal, arcane, unfathomable creatures of great power that only he, Geraldus, can converse with. Pretty wild bullshit, even for cultists. The thirty or so mutilated bodies in the hotel ballroom had been the entirety of his followers.

So, an unknown mad man with a few dozen loyal disciples, their activities kept hush-hush, and their actions in the past few days definitely unnoticed. The pollen-dusted, leaf-covered cars parked alongside the cleaner ones—the cultists had staggered their arrival so as not to attract attention. David’s fairly certain it worked. If the diner’s owner was being truthful, then no one from out of the area had stopped by on the way to the hotel recently save for David. The man remembered nothing but the usual traffic. But Oliver Ward’s vehicle with the still-smoldering cigarette butt ground down into the ashtray—whatever fucked up ritual they’d done that had left them all dead was completed _right before David arrived._

Who called the cops? And—whoever they were—had they just found their courage too late to save anyone, or had they _wanted_ the law to burst into that rotted husk of a hotel and find nothing but mangled corpses and Diarmuid sobbing behind the curtains?

As a policewoman calls into the radio to request more body bags, David hears the snippet of another conversation going on in the background. It’s drowned out by static, _“—don’t think he’s here, sir. Nothing matches—_ “

David slowly, pointedly reaches over and turns the radio off. The cop glances at him, then back to the empty road. David asks, “Some of those people had been at the hotel for _days_ and no one noticed them. Why’d you all come out now? Who tipped you off about this?”

The guy looks nervous. It’s a bright but chilly autumn day and he’s sweating like he was walking the beat in the middle of a heat wave. “What do you know about that hotel?”

David frowns. “Not too much. Man at the diner told me a bit.”

“There’s a family around here—the de Mervilles? They made a lot of money during Prohibition. Bought up a lot of land for future development. But then, with the stock market crash, and then the repeal… That’s the real reason this place is so _barren_. They managed to keep hold of the land, but they got no money to build on it. Don’t want anyone else to have it, neither. Well—“ He pauses. “You happen to see an old man in that hotel?”

“Saw a lot of dead people in a lot of pieces,” David says flatly, “Wouldn’t be able to tell you either way.”

The cop idly nods. “Raymond de Merville, he’s the one who called. Said his father had finally gotten an offer too good to refuse. Man name of Geraldus wanted to negotiate at the site, so he went up there to talk to him and never came back down. But I don’t think that makes sense.” He gives David a sidelong glance. “I saw some of them cars, too. Baron de Merville, his was one of the one’s that had been there for _days._ ”

More to the story than what the son initially said, then. David asks, “Got any idea what they could’ve been up to?”

“Don’t know, exactly. But if they find the old man in that pile of blood and guts, I think I’ll have a better idea.”

David doesn’t push the matter any further. He’s lucky to have gotten this much information. The guy’s told him way too much. The sheer shock of it must have loosened his lips, but he’s still a cop in a county that’s just gotten roughly thirty homicides and one case of kidnapping and attempted murdered. They’ll all be chomping at the bit to clear this, however they can. He turns the radio back on—an indication that their conversation is over—and glances in the rearview mirror to check on Diarmuid.

He’s been so quiet David had thought he’d fallen asleep, but instead those honey-brown eyes meet his, inquisitive and alert.

Diarmuid cocks his head to the side, just a little, and smiles.

* * *

The sheriff had called ahead. When they finally arrive at the hospital—closer to the city than the country, and if Diarmuid had been bleeding out he’d be dead by now—there’s staff waiting anxiously outside with a gurney.

David lifts Diarmuid out of the back of the police car and eases him onto the stretcher, snapping at the staff as they walk towards them. “Careful with his leg,” he barks. Two candy stripers, a young man and young woman, barely out of high school, squeak and hide behind the doctor, a slighter, hard-faced man about David’s age who does not look particularly bothered by being yelled at. “He’s got a bad cut. And he’s real sensitive to the light and loud noises. It hurts him. _Be careful_ ,” David repeats.

The doctor raises his eyebrows, unperturbed. He beckons a nervous nurse forward and has him start pushing Diarmuid’s gurney into the hospital. David follows behind like a tense, wary, hulking guard dog.

“Anything else I should know?” the man asks.

“Don’t know much beyond what I told you. I’m sorry.”

Diarmuid pipes up, “They _brought_ me here.” He lifts the bloody towel from his leg to point at David, a gentle smile on his face. “David saved me.”

One of the nurses hisses when she sees Diarmuid’s leg wound, but David stares at it, puzzled. It’s still bad, but now it seems—not as deep a cut as it was earlier. His eyes flit to Diarmuid’s wrists and David _swears_ they had been a much uglier, darker purple just before they got into the police car. Had he just imagined the injuries worse in that dark, bloody ballroom?

The doctor says, “That’s going to need stitches. And a tetanus shot. I don’t trust _cultists_ to keep their ritualistic murdering tools clean. What’s your name, kid?”

“D’midh,” the young man mumbles. But after a glance at David he says, a little more clearly, “ _Diarmuid_.”

“Another Irishman? Finally, some good conversation! My name’s Rua.” Then, more to himself than anyone else, he murmurs, “Fear na tuaithe, seo!”

Diarmuid fixes the man with an odd, inscrutable expression. “Tá mé i bhfad ó bhaile,” he replies.

Ah, so Diarmuid speaks Irish. The son of immigrants? Or maybe—his English has an odd kind of accent, a little lilt that’s pleasant to David’s ears, as though he still isn’t quite used to the language. Perhaps he was sent here to provide for his family, alone and friendless in a strange land, and then taken advantage of by people who would have used him for their own fucked up, evil means. A surge of protectiveness rises in David’s chest, increases as Diarmuid panics when they begin to wheel the gurney away.

“David!” he cries. He attempts to step onto the floor and the small herd of medical staff immediately surround him to lay him back on the stretcher. The small, distressed noise that Diarmuid makes breaks David’s heart.

“Let me come with him,” David begs, “He’s scared.”

He breathes a sigh of relief when Rua agrees. “Fine. Keep Diarmuid calm while we stitch his leg up and proceed with an examination. We might need your help.”

* * *

Neither the nurses nor Rua, no matter how they cajole, have any luck getting any new information out of Diarmuid. He’s perceptive. Quiet, but not shy. He observes everyone’s movements carefully and with a puzzled kind of interest. There’s a kind of wonder in his eyes as he watches Rua suture the skin on his leg and pull it back together, neat and tidy. He hides in David’s arm at the tetanus shot, flinches when the needle pierces his shoulder, but still stares, unblinking, at the nurse throughout the entire procedure.

David leaves the room only when Diarmuid has to change into a hospital gown. It takes much coaxing on both Rua and David’s part to get the young man to part with the coat. Eventually he begins to unbutton it, pouting all the while, and David congratulates himself on a job well done when Diarmuid shrugs a bit of the material off and suddenly his freckled skin is on display—his shoulders and collarbone, his chest.

David stands, face red and burning, and assures the very top of Diarmuid’s head that he’ll be right outside if he needs him. It’s utterly stupid. Moronic. The young man was stark naked when they first met, after all. But there’s something utterly intimate about watching Diarmuid strip off _his_ coat.

David waits in the hallway, ashamed and furious at himself for his reaction. Diarmuid’s not some dancer or pinup model to ogle. He’s been kidnapped and held captive and sliced open and nearly fucking _murdered_. He’s got no one but David for protect him. To keep him safe.

But he’s lovely. He’s so lovely. Diarmuid’s big, brown doe eyes, his soft, warm smile—David’s pretty sure someone would have to be clinically dead for their heart not to beat faster at the sight of the young man.

Is that another reason why Geraldus picked him? A beautiful young sacrifice for his loyal, loving disciples? Those bruises on Diarmuid’s wrist, the now-stitched cut on his leg, and his nudity—what the fuck were they going to _do_ to him? Goddamned fucking _monsters_.

The door opens and David jumps, startled out of his thoughts. Rua stands there. He doesn’t even try to hide his knowing look.

“It’s safe to come in now,” he says with a smirk.

David flips him off.

In the hospital room Diarmuid sits upright in his bed. He’s been cleaned of blood and grime, his curls slightly tamed. The long-sleeved, light blue hospital gown, along with how his face brightens when David reenters the room, makes him look so sweet. David feels a lopsided grin pulling at his face at the sight of him.

There’s a thick blanket covering his lower half, and on top of the blanket is the well-worn coat. David muses that he probably won’t be getting the thing back anytime soon, but that doesn’t matter. It obviously comforts Diarmuid. And it looks better on him than it ever did on David, anyway.

He takes the young man’s hand in his. “There we go. Don’t you look pretty.” That’s a gross understatement, but Diarmuid smiles and rubs David’s fingers, his palm, as if memorizing all the scars and calluses.

Diarmuid says, “Doctor Rua said I have to sleep. But what if they come back? Stay here with me, David. Please?” All the cult members are nothing but bags of limbs and guts sitting in a coroner’s office, but David knows better than anyone how the dead can still haunt and hurt.

He moves a chair next to Diarmuid’s bed and sits down. With an air of finality that dares the staff to argue with him, he tells Diarmuid, “I’ll be right here. It’s okay. Go to sleep.”

His words chase all the worry from the young man’s eyes. Diarmuid nestles into the bed and pulls the coat up so that it comes to rest under his chin. “Yes, David,” he murmurs.

Then he’s out like a light.

* * *

David dozes with him, just as exhausted from the day’s events. When he wakes it’s evening, the blinds and curtains drawn but the night seeping into the room like a fog. Diarmuid is still asleep in his bed, snoring softly, his chest rising and falling in a smooth, steady rhythm. He’s clutching David’s coat to his chest. He looks peaceful.

Before he realizes what he’s doing, David reaches across the bed and brushes a few stray curls away from his face. Diarmuid makes a small noise and for a moment David fears he’s woken him, but then his expression gentles under David’s touch and he continues snoring.

A nice, calm rest.

With careful, quiet steps David makes his way out of the room. He walks down the hallway, nodding in polite greeting at passing nurses and doctors and the occasional patient stretching their legs. He walks to the reception area, and, after confirming that he’ll be allowed back in to stay with Diarmuid after leaving the premises, walks out the door.

A dark, cold, autumn night awaits him. The scent of the hospital—soap and chemical sanitizer—is replaced by the smell of dry leaves, hay, and a bit of lingering smoke from the hospital’s inhabitants taking none too surreptitious cigarette breaks outside of the building. The moon is waning. It’s shaped like a fingernail. David raises his arm, fingers clenched into a fist, thumb raised, and aligns his thumbnail with the crescent moon.

With a burst of uncharacteristic childishness he pretends to swipe it out of the sky like a painter running a brush on canvas.

Then David shakes his head at himself, squares his shoulders, and walks down the street to the nearest payphone. Most of his change is still in his coat. He digs into his pocket. Lighter. Switchblade. And, luckily, two nickels—just enough for both the calls he has to make.

The first is to the Wards. They pick up on the second ring. It’s Mr. Ward that has the phone, but David can hear Mrs. Ward in the background.

“ _I’ve got it, Evie, I’ve got it—Yes, who is this?_ ”

The three of them all know there’d only be one person with one reason to call this time of night. “It’s David, sir. I’ve got bad news.”

“ _You’ve found Oliver, then? Is—is that right?_ ” Ever since David first met the man he’s had a resigned, morose air about him. As if finding his son alive was a fool’s errand to begin with. As if he was just paying David to bring him physical evidence of what he already knew. But now David can hear the honest disappointment in his voice, the way his voice cracks as the grief hits him.

“I’m going to the coroner’s office tomorrow. To make an identification, but—“ David pauses, unsure with how much to tell him. But this is big news—it’s more than thirty fucking people dead in some sort of occult ritual—and whatever Ward’s involvement his parents don’t deserve to hear it from the investigators or tabloid reporters that are going to come sniffing around their home in the next few days. “Sir, ma’am—there’s a few dozen dead bodies down here.”

“ _What?_ ” Mrs. Ward asks in the background. “ _They’re all dead? How can they be all dead?_ ”

David replies, “I honestly don’t know. I really don’t. But what I saw today—please, don’t come up here. I don’t want you to see your son like that. I have his photo. I know what he looks like, but—” He doesn’t know how to phrase this delicately. “Are there any marks, or scars on your son that would help me identify him if—if I had some trouble going just by the face?”

Mr. Ward lets out a long, shuddering sigh, like all the air in his lungs are being pressed from his chest. “ _It was a pretty nasty thing, wasn’t it, David?_ ” He sounds dazed. In shock. But even so he answers, “ _Ah, there’s a scar where he got his appendix taken out. And—heh, along his chest there’s this little trail of dots, almost? Cousin of his peppered him with BB gun pellets one summer. Close range. Left those little marks. You nearly throttled that girl, didn’t you, Evie?”_

_“I did. She hurt my little boy,”_ Mrs. Ward says, very, very quietly.

“ _We’ll wire you the rest of the money we owe you, David.”_

“Look, don’t—“ David runs his free hand through his hair. “Don’t worry about the payment, alright? Just—” Just grieve, he wants to say.

But suddenly Mr. Ward’s voice turns sharp. The tone that Oliver Ward probably heard all the time growing up, doing the stupid, reckless things that kids do. “ _What, you’re a private detective who only gets paid when his cases turn out well? You wouldn’t be able to keep your office’s lights on. Identify my son. Tell them our address, so that he comes home when they’re done with him. And then when you return you’ll come here and take this goddamned envelope. Okay?”_

“Yes, sir,” David says.

“ _That—that settles that, then,”_ Mr. Ward replies, all bluster gone. “ _I—have a good night, David. Thank you.”_

He offers his condolences. Before he hangs up the phone he hears Mrs. Ward murmur, in her very, very quiet voice, “ _A few dozen people, he said? Well, at least he didn’t die alone._ ”

The next call is easier. David phones his landlady and sometimes secretary, Mrs. Zielinski. She is a small, wizened Polish widow whose children and grandchildren don’t visit nearly enough and so she has adopted David in much the same way someone adopts a feral tomcat—setting food out for him, occasionally tending to his wounds from some alley brawl, and, in general, hoping that he hasn’t died out in the middle of street.

“ _You’re alive?_ ” She sounds pleased as punch. “ _I was a little worried. Not a word from you in days!”_

David manages a tired smile. “Yeah, I’m alive. So don’t haul my stuff out to the curb just yet.”

“ _Never! You have till the end of the month to pay rent.”_

“Mrs. Zielinski, got someone who might need a place to stay for a while. He got hurt pretty bad and—I don’t know if he’s got anyone else to take care of him right now. Might be stuck with me. Just wanted to let you know I’ll probably be coming home with a friend.”

“ _Oh, I understand. Yes, of course. Poor thing. But don’t talk so badly of yourself,”_ she chides, _“Stuck with you! Whoever this friend is_ , _he is very lucky_ _to have you looking out for him_.”

David says, “Thank you. I’ll see you soon.”

Then he hangs up and makes his way back into the hospital and to the room where Diarmuid sleeps, lovely and serene.

It’s odd, though. The room seems darker than before. The shadows are deep, intense, like a pool of thick, black ink. The dim light from the hallway ceiling doesn’t quite reach the space underneath the closed door. Like the darkness is blocking it.

But that’s not a bad thing. The hospital’s lighting is too artificial, too unpleasant. It pairs well with that strong scent of cleaning supplies that permeates the halls. But here, in this room with Diarmuid, there’s nothing but shadow like a warm blanket, surrounding the both of them. It’s comforting. A vast, calm, beautiful dark—

Wait—wait, that phrase, why did he—David’s heard that somewhere before. Where? It was from—

Geraldus’s writings.

_O! Vous vaste, calme, belle sombre._

Jesus. David shakes his head and settles back into the chair next to Diarmuid’s bed. It’s been a long day, and obviously he’s been more affected by the events that have transpired than he initially thought if his subconscious is offering him the ravings of madmen.

David focuses on Diarmuid. He once again watches his chest rise and fall, watches him occasionally mumble nearly inaudible, incomprehensible phrases in his sleep, watches him nestle ever further into the layers of coat and blanket.

And then he closes his eyes and drifts off to the sound of Diarmuid’s breathing and to the warm, heavy weight of the darkness around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google translated Irish phrases: 
> 
> Fear na tuaithe, seo! - A countryman, here!
> 
> Tá mé i bhfad ó bhaile. - I am far from home.


	3. The Investigation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David goes to the coroner's office and returns with questions for Diarmuid.

In the morning a nurse opens the blinds. Rays of warm light fall on David’s face. He shifts, squeezes his eyes shut a little tighter, frowns, and brings a hand to his face to block the sunlight.

Then he remembers Diarmuid’s reactions to the flashing police sirens. The way he cried into his chest as the light hit his eyes. David lurches forward to the hospital bed, ready to cover the young man with his body if need be.

But Diarmuid merely gazes down at him, pleased if slightly puzzled to see him scrabbling on the coat and blanket. “David,” he says, smiling, “You’re awake.”

David’s face turns red. He feels sheepish. Feels even more flustered looking at how long and dark Diarmuid’s lashes are. “I’m awake. You okay? The light didn’t hurt you? You look—you look great.”

That lengthy rest has done a world of good for Diarmuid. His big, brown eyes are bright, his curls lustrous and shining. He’s regained his color as well. His lips are pretty and pink, his cheeks flushed, and when David carefully inspects his arms he can no longer see the veins running under the young man’s skin.

Wait a minute—

“Your bruises are gone, too,” he exclaims. Completely unblemished. Just a smattering of lovely little freckles dotting his skin like constellations.

“I feel better today,” Diarmuid offers.

David is about to ask about his leg when another nurse brings in a breakfast tray. Oatmeal, lightly buttered toast, scrambled eggs, and a glass of orange juice, all with that same, washed-out color that hospital food seems required to serve. He chuckles at Diarmuid’s dubious stare and says, “You’ll feel even better if you eat something.”

The young man nibbles on the toast like a mouse. He sips intermittently at the orange juice. He even manages to finish the lumpy, beige oatmeal, spoonful by spoonful. But when the nurse encourages him to eat the very pale yellow, wet pile of scrambled eggs Diarmuid gives David a pleading look.

So, obviously, when the woman leaves the room David quickly shovels the stuff into his mouth. It’s not bad. At least, it’s not _horrible_. Anything is better than the C-rations, bland and tasteless and eaten shivering in foxholes. The eggs are bland and tasteless as well, but he’s safe in the hospital, sharing a meal with a beautiful young man.

Infinitely better.

When the nurse returns Diarmuid happily hands her the empty tray. But his smile fades when David asks, “Do you think you’ll be okay without me for a little while? I have a job to do. I’ll be back, don’t worry. But it’ll take a few hours.”

Diarmuid frowns. “It’s important for you to go?”

David nods.

“I’ll be fine,” Diarmuid says, “But it’ll be very _dull_ without you, David.” The he says it makes David smile. He loves the way Diarmuid talks. Clear and lilting and not a little grandiose. Like a prince.

“Glad you enjoy my company so much.” He wraps one of Diarmuid’s small hands in his larger ones. “They’ll keep you entertained here. They got books and magazines. Rua might be able to talk with you a bit, if he’s not too busy today.”

This seems to cheer Diarmuid slightly. “I _suppose_. I like Dr. Rua. He’s kind, and funny.”

David smiles. “See? You don’t need me at all.” It’s a joke, an offhand comment—only meant to tease—but Diarmuid’s eyes widen to the size of saucers.

He frantically shakes his head.

“No! No, David! Please, don’t think that, please,” he entreats. The distress is obvious in his panicked expression, his tremulous voice. Jesus, David feels like a real heel. “Dr. Rua is a good man, but you’re _the best of men_.”

The sincerity in Diarmuid’s voice shocks David. The young man gazes at him like he’s some sort of hero and not a walking, talking, broken shell of man barely holding the pieces of himself together.

David huffs an incredulous laugh as he replies, “Sweetheart, I think you need to meet more people.”

“I don’t want more people. I only want _you_.” Diarmuid stares up at him through those long, dark lashes. He pouts his pretty, pink lips. “Don’t you want me, too?”

Before David’s brain can even begin to comprehend the young man’s question, let alone form a response, Rua enters the room. The doctor looks mildly irritated—though, that might just be his general expression—and smells faintly of cigarette smoke.

“Good morning, Diarmuid. I hope you’re feeling better today.” To David he says, “This time I will have to ask you to leave, detective. At least until visiting hours start again.”

“Was just heading out,” David replies. When Diarmuid’s face falls he adds, “Diarmuid, when I get back, will you tell me about your day?”

The young man beams. “Of course, David.” His smile is so bright.

As David walks from the room the lights flicker.

* * *

There’s a commotion at the coroner’s office when he arrives. David waits in a dimly lit lobby, starting at the various well-kept plants, still verdant and green and blooming despite the lack of sunlight. Down the hallway an argument echoes, bouncing along the walls, bits and pieces reaching David’s ears. “Ridiculous,” is the word he hears most, along with “unbelievable” and “incompetence.”

Eventually the coroner, a slight, bespectacled woman, walks out into the lobby muttering to herself. “Never seen a thing like it,” she says under her breath. David assumes she means the thirty-some dead bodies found, but instead, after giving his hand a firm, brusque shake the woman continues, “They mixed up the pieces. Completely ridiculous. How are we supposed to identify all these people if some of them are missing heads?”

“What,” David says.

She throws her arms to the air in exasperation. “I don’t have enough room here for all of the bodies, so some were sent to the coroner’s office in the county next over. Except most of the people they pulled out of that hotel are in complete shambles—arms and legs and heads everywhere, all these partially filled body bags—and no one bothered to check if each office was getting _complete_ bodies. Now I’ve got to coordinate an exchange of limbs and torsos before we get this mess sorted out.”

David isn’t entirely sure how to respond to this information. The coroner’s expectant stare spurs him to reply, “Hell of a lot more work for you.”

“Completely right. Now, what can I do for you, sir?”

He introduces himself, shows her his card. “I’m a private detective. Here to identify a body, if I can.”

The coroner winces. “Ah, well. I see. Let’s hope they’re here, then. And all together.”

* * *

She watches him take Oliver Ward’s photo from his pocket. “That might not do as much good as you think.”

“I’m aware,” David replies. He’s acutely aware, in fact. Some of the bodies in the hotel’s ballroom were almost shredded. Pieces smeared across the wall that could have once been internal organs or could have been pulverized bits of flesh and limb—difficult to tell, with all the blood. “If his face isn’t— _intact_ —then there should be some old scars along his chest. From BB gun pellets.”

They search for Ward body by body. A few of the cultists are relatively intact, marred only by a missing limb here or there or broken, shattered bones and faces permanently fixed in expressions of fear and agony. Others have been collected together like some sort of grisly mosaic.

It’s somewhat heartening when he can rule out the very worst of the bodies, the ones that are all exposed muscle and sinew and are more chunks people than actual people. At the same time it’s concerning. Is the man here, too mutilated to even recognize with the photo as reference and knowledge of his scars? Has he been sent to the other county’s coroner’s office—an even longer drive and an ever longer wait for Mr. and Mrs. Ward?

But then the coroner says, “Oh, here. I see it, now. This is him, right?”

David comes up behind her, looming over her shoulder. He stares in shock.

“Yeah,” David mutters, “That’s him.”

At first glance he appears completely unscathed—just a body, laying there on the table. He could be mistaken for asleep if not for the pale, lifeless color of his skin, his eyes, open just barely, blank and unseeing. There’s a rust-brown stain that’s seeped through his shirt, at his side near his stomach. Oliver Ward’s brows are furrowed, slightly, his teeth clenched. It’s a rather mild, perturbed expression—as if he died trying to figure out a particularly difficult math problem. Frustration and confusion.

“Do you know what happened to him?” David asks.

“Stabbed,” the coroner says. “Something with a flat ground blade. Most likely a knife, with how deep it is and wide the wound is.”

“A knife,” David repeats. What the fuck? “Was he the only one? Stabbed?”

The coroner seems to understand his confusion. “As far as I can tell. I can identify a cause of death on any of these people—blood loss, blunt force trauma. They’ve all been thrown or ripped apart. But I can’t for the life of me figure out a cause for the cause of death. What could do this to so many people in such a short amount of time? But this one I know for sure. He was stabbed and he bled to death.”

David thinks of the gash on Diarmuid’s leg. Of the young man hiding, shivering and crying, behind the tattered curtains. A knife. Had the same person who’d injured Diarmuid been the same one to kill Ward. And the both of them, otherwise untouched by what fucking _annihilated_ the rest. What happened in that ballroom? He has to ask Diarmuid about it—but gently, so as not to upset him. After they’ve talked about his day.

The coroner hums as she makes notes on her clipboard. “Well, that’s good we have one of the group identified at least. I was worried. They’re not from around here. Most of them don’t even have driver’s licenses. Just a bunch of John and Jane Does.”

“Think anyone else is looking for them?”

The woman asks, “You didn’t see the paper this morning?” David shakes his head. He’d been preoccupied with Diarmuid. The coroner disappears into her office and quickly returns with a newspaper in hand. “Take a look at that.”

The headline is like something out of a dime novel. Pure pulp.

_Hotel of horrors! Dozens dead in botched demonic rite! Owner ‘Baron’ de Merville found dead in the carnage!_

Grainy photographs litter the front page and the next. Oddly shaped body bags. The horrified, nauseous faces of law enforcement officers, still obvious even with the slight blur. The hotel itself, a relic of a bygone era, dilapidated outside and completely rotten within. David’s car is missing from the photos—they all must’ve been taken after that loose-lipped police officer drove him and Diarmuid to the hospital while another followed behind in David’s own vehicle.

Thank God for that. He can’t imagine the lurid, tasteless photos that would have graced this rag if their reporters had seen Diarmuid, bare and hurt and helpless in David’s arms.

Included among the pictures of the crime scene is a photo of an old man—haughty, almost hiding a sneer. He brings to mind an oil-painting portrait of some puffed-up 18th century nobleman.

Baron de Merville.

So, he’d been there after all. Business with Geraldus, ostensibly. Negotiations over the hotel. But that cop had said the old man’s car had been one of the vehicles with days worth of undisturbed dust and pollen and fallen leaves all over the roof and windshield.

A cult. A man stabbed to death. The rest murdered by _something_ , somehow. And Diarmuid, kidnapped, injured, and confused. He needs to get to the bottom of this.

To the coroner David says, “The word’s out. Won’t that be good for you?”

She pulls a face. “Soon we’ll be swamped reporters and hopeful loved ones of missing people. And they’ll have to come all the way here, won’t they? Those without any identification at all—we can’t very well publish their photos in the paper. Not with how they look. Some of them don’t even have _faces_ anymore.”

“Rough situation for you,” David says. “Look—I know you’re busy. But this man’s parents. They’re expecting him. Can you help get him ready to go home?”

Her expression softens. “Leave their contact information with me. I’ll get him where he needs to be.”

“Thank you. And—sorry—you mind if I keep this?” He holds up the paper.

“Go right ahead.”

“Thank you,” he says again. “Best of luck.”

David doesn’t linger. The odd, dull, blue-white light of the room, artificial and nauseating. The bodies, broken and in pieces like the aftermath of a mortar attack. The smell of old blood, decay.

He resolutely makes his way back to the hospital.

Back to Diarmuid.

* * *

There must be something wrong with the building’s electrics. The lights keep flickering. David glances at the ceiling with a frown. Got to be hard doing surgeries—or even just routine examinations—without proper lighting.

Diarmuid’s room seems especially dark, even with the blinds open as they are. David stretches his arm out into the space near the corner, almost expecting to touch solid shadow with his fingertips.

Of course, he doesn’t. He drops his arm to the side, feeling foolish.

But Diarmuid’s practically glowing as he dozes on the hospital bed. He looks like an angel, truly. Curly brown hair fanned out against the pillow, rosy cheeks, those long, dark lashes. And David’s coat still covers him as an extra blanket.

There’s such a peaceful expression on his face. David gently shuts the door and makes his way to the young man’s side. Despite his best efforts, the chair scrapes against the floor as he pulls it closer to the bed.

Diarmuid wakes. His eyelashes flutter open. He turns and breaks out into a wide smile at the sight of David there, cursing his clumsiness.

“Sorry,” David mutters. “Was trying to be quiet. Didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”

“No, please, don’t be sorry. I’m so glad to see you. I’m so glad you’re back.” Diarmuid’s smile is a bright, gorgeous thing. And he’s so earnest and sincere—he’s never quite sure what to make of it. His big brown eyes always look at David like he’s someone worth admiring. Worth adoring.

He reaches for Diarmuid’s hand. “Did you have a nice day?”

Diarmuid shrugs. “As nice as it could have been without you here. I saw that man today, the one who thought you were _Geraldus_. He asked me questions.”

That man? “The sheriff? He was here? Did he talk to you alone?”

“No, Dr. Rua was here with me the whole time. He said that—“ Diarmuid pauses as he recalls the man’s words. “He said that this is the hospital, not the sheriff’s office, and I’m his patient, not their suspect, and if they had a problem with that then they could take it up with the director, but he wasn’t going to leave the room.”

The good doctor’s quite the spitfire. What David wouldn’t have given to see the man go toe-to-toe with the sheriff. “What did he ask you about?”

The coat that Diarmuid uses as a blanket is an old, ragged thing. David wishes he could afford better, watching the young man play with the sleeves, the frayed edges of the material. “What I knew about _Geraldus_ —“ When he says the man’s name he makes a face as though he’s tasted something particularly nasty. “And his _ilk_. What they wanted, and what I was doing there.”

“And what did you tell him?”

The coat and blankets rustle as Diarmuid leans closer to David. “I said as much as I could. I don’t know if he liked my answers very much. But Dr. Rua made him leave.” he pitches his voice lower and does a remarkable imitation of the doctor. “ _This isn’t an interrogation. This isn’t even an interview. But there’s the door_.”

Then Diarmuid smiles and giggles. It’s the sweetest sound David’s ever heard.

David’s glad that Diarmuid’s feeling better. That the sheriff’s questions didn’t bother him. He hopes the young man won’t mind a few more. “Diarmuid,” he asks, “Can you tell me what you told the sheriff?”

Diarmuid looks genuinely puzzled. “Why?”

“Because—“ David pauses. Because he wants to know what Diarmuid went through, of course. To better understand what he experienced. To share in it. To protect him from it. He cannot erase bad memories—his own nightmares attest to that, dreams of shaking earth, of trees bursting and splintering in every direction, of friends who are there one second, a lit cigarette in their mouth, and then in the next instant nothing but a mass of bloody meat left in the snow—but he can ease the burden of it, a little. If Diarmuid allows.

But David is also a detective, and this is a mystery of the highest order. What was the cult doing at the hotel? What was it that killed them? What did they need Diarmuid for? What had the older de Merville been up to? What is the younger one up to now? How are they both involved in this? And Oliver Ward—what of him? He was there for the ritual, yes, but the map hidden behind his family’s photo, his cause of death—had his loyalty been wavering? Was he killed for that? What can he tell the man’s grieving parents when they next meet?

Slowly, carefully, David says, “I’d like to know what you went through. So I can help you. Protect you.” Diarmuid looks pleased with this answer. He continues, “But—whatever you saw, Diarmuid—it could help other people as well. If I knew what happened.”

“Help them?”

“It would—it would bring them peace, if I can give them some information.”

The young man considers this. “I can help _you_ , David? Ask me your questions, then.” He sits up straighter in the bed.

David takes a deep breath. “What do you know about Geraldus?”

“He thinks he’s chosen—bound for greatness. But all he can do is _talk_. Him and those others—they don’t know _anything_.”

“They kidnapped you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me how?”

Diarmuid’s lower lip quivers. “I don’t really know. I was with my father and then—and then I wasn’t. I was in that place, with all those people.” He sniffles. his eyes are wet, tears clinging to his lashes.

“Your father, Diarmuid?”

“I don’t know how I’ll get back to him. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where _I_ am. He must be so worried, and I—“

Gently, David cups Diarmuid’s cheek with his hand. “Hey,” he murmurs, “Don’t worry. Did you forget? I’m a detective, aren’t I? I’ll find him for you.”

Diarmuid sighs. “Oh, David. Thank you.” He grabs David’s wrist. “You’re so wonderful.”

They stay like that for a moment, David eager to provide what solace he can and Diarmuid leaning into his touch, content and comforted by his scarred and callused palm. Eventually—and reluctantly—David has to continue with his questions. He leaves the warmth of Diarmuid’s skin to grab the newspaper from the coroner’s office. He smoothes it out on the bed as best he can and points to the photo of Baron de Merville.

“Was this man there, Diarmuid?”

“Yes.”

“As a—a participant? One of the people that took you?”

“Yes.”

“You told the sheriff that, too?”

“I did.”

Then David shows him the photo of Oliver Ward. “Is he one of the people that took you, Diarmuid?”

The young man frowns at the photo. “No.”

“You didn’t see him in the crowd?”

A shake of the head, brown curls bouncing with the movement. “That’s not what I meant. He was there, but he was already dead. I saw him.”

“Already dead?” That timeline would mean—maybe Ward _had_ gotten second thoughts. Felt uneasy about kidnapping a helpless, unsuspecting person for—whatever it was the cult wanted Diarmuid for.

He takes Diarmuid’s hands in his. “Can you tell me what they did? If it’s too much to talk about right now, that’s okay.”

But Diarmuid looks determined. “No, I can, David. I told the sheriff and Dr. Rua already. I can tell you.” He says, “I woke up and they were all there. Those people. It was so noisy and crowded and bright and it _hurt_. And then they—that man, Geraldus—they held me down on the floor and he _cut me_.”

The smudged pentagram. Diarmuid’s bruised wrists. The bloody gash on his leg. David feels ill. He gives the young man’s hands a comforting squeeze. “What happened then?”

“I was so scared. I was screaming and I hurt and I fought them as best I could but David, it hurt _so badly._ And then I woke up again. Dr. Rua said I must’ve passed out from the pain.” Diarmuid stares at him with his big, brown doe eyes. “And they were all dead, and I didn’t know what to do, so I hid. Behind the curtain. I don’t know how long I was there but then—then _you_ found me, David!” With that he drops David’s hands and flings his arms around his neck. David returns the embrace, pulling the young man close to him.

What a fucking nightmare. Kidnapped and nearly murdered, and then alone and bleeding and frightened in a room full of dead bodies. Jesus Christ.

But Diarmuid’s story doesn’t answer one very important question: What killed the cultists? The only possible explanation is that they turned out themselves, but it’s an impossible scenario. No human could have ever put all those bodies in such a state—ripping limb from limb, shattering spines against walls. And during the carnage both Oliver Ward’s body and an unconscious Diarmuid had been left alone. One dead—the other mistaken for dead, perhaps?

Maybe they just fucked up whatever ritual they’d done, David thinks, rubbing a soothing hand along Diarmuid’s back, maybe whatever black magic they’d done had just killed them all, the motherfuckers. Was that why they’d needed Diarmuid? Maybe an ingredient? An outsider’s blood?

“Diarmuid?” he asks, quietly. “Do you know what they wanted with you?”

“Oh, yes, David.” Diarmuid nestles against him, one hand pressed to David’s chest. He murmurs, “They were going to eat me. That's what the knife was for. To cut me open.”

What the fuck.

What the _fuck_.

Bile rises in David’s throat. “Jesus. Jesus, Diarmuid, they—“ The gash on Diarmuid’s leg, deep and bloody. They were going to _butcher him_. “Fucking Christ.”

Diarmuid looks up at him. He smiles, soft and sweet, and lifts his hand to press his fingers against David’s lips. “That’s funny, David. You have the same look on your face as the sheriff and Dr. Rua did when I told _them_.”


	4. Two Offers and A Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David prepares to leave the hospital with Diarmuid. He has a chat with Rua and finally meets Raymond de Merville, who has taken an odd interest in Diarmuid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be the last chapter for a while because I'll be taking part in NaNoWriMo (or attempting to, at least). Rest assured I will work on finishing this fic as soon as that is over. :)

Diarmuid dozes off in short order. David holds him as he snores, listening to each soft inhale and exhale of breath, carding his fingers through the young man’s curls.

 _They were going to eat me_ , he’d said, _Cut me open_. Plain and matter-of-fact, like it wasn’t a big deal. Like that kind of thing just happened sometimes. That you could be walking along with your father somewhere and then suddenly a cannibalistic murder-cult could snatch you from him and bring you to some dilapidated hotel where they tried to kill you, butcher you, distribute your flesh and organs among themselves and—

Jesus, what for? What would be the purpose of such ritual? Did Geraldus want to cement his followers to him? No turning back after kidnapping, murdering, and cannibalizing someone. And Oliver Ward—maybe he’d had second thoughts about the whole thing. Geraldus could’ve had him taken out before they brought in Diarmuid so that his misgivings couldn’t spread to anyone else.

David’s seen a lot of fucked up shit in his life. The unwashed and starving in every city he stopped in when he road the rails, kicked out of his parents’ house when the stock market crashed and a teenage boy was too great a mouth to feed. Whole towns gone all across Europe, decimated by war. Men and women fighting beside him, there one moment and gone the next. Staring down at a fellow soldier, a friend, bullet through the face, in one side and out the other, lower jaw a mass of pulp and shattered teeth, eyes clouded and unseeing. Big-mouthed drunks and unlucky gamblers, and what happened when people lost their patience for them—dead in gutters, bloody, ragged messes missing appendages, bodies contorted in agony from the torture they’d endured.

But what those people tried to do to Diarmuid is—It’s abhorrent. Monstrous. Diarmuid is sweet, and innocent, and _good_. A little angel nearly brought to an anguished, ignoble end by the machinations of some crazed charlatan. Just the thought of what he must’ve endured at the hands of those _monsters_ is heart-wrenching. Frightened. Confused. Crying and in pain. But fighting—he’d said that, too—he’d fought them as best he could before fainting from sheer stress and pain.

And he’d woken up to find them dead.

That part still bothers David. What had happened during that time when Diarmuid was unconscious? An absolute disintegration of humanity? It’d been an orgy of violence. The aftermath had turned even David’s battle-hardened stomach.

He’s glad Diamruid wasn’t awake for it. He’s glad the young man sleeps so soundly now, in his arms. And he’s glad—terribly, selfishly glad—that Diarmuid takes comfort in being with him.

David carefully shifts to lay Diarmuid back onto the hospital bed. He fluffs his pillow, pulls the blanket and coat-turned-blanket over top of him, and then, quickly but gently, kisses his cheek.

Diarmuid smiles in his sleep. He nuzzles into his pillow with a little sigh of contentment. David takes one last glance at him, pale and pretty and peaceful in bed, skin practically shining against the darkened room, and makes his way out the door.

* * *

It’s as though the evening has followed him. It’s like night in the building. Some of the hospital staff walk with flashlights. Others are guided by the light of their cigarettes, the ember glowing in the shadows, bouncing down the hallway like a will-o’-the-wisp.

Perhaps it’s because he’s spent so much time in Diarmuid’s nearly pitch-black room that David’s eyes have no need to adjust. He watches, bemused, as others pass by clutching the wall or place one slow, uneasy step in front of the other.

Two maintenance men, one holding a ladder and one near the ceiling, tapping at the dim light fixture, argue with one another.

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with it, I’m telling you,” the man near the lights says in frustration. “It’s just—the dark is too strong.”

David brushes past them as the worker holding the ladder lets out a derisive snort. He makes his way to Rua’s office, determined to discuss the end of Diarmuid’s stay. It’s high time they leave. David needs to get back to his office. See Mr. and Mrs. Ward. Collect his payment. Get Diarmuid settled into his apartment and locate his father. Leave this place and this entire experience behind. Give Diarmuid every and all reason to smile.

Those bastards were going to fucking _eat him_ , Jesus fucking _Christ_.

He bursts through the office door. The doctor takes one look at his face and gives him an understanding, sympathetic look. “I see he told you about the cultists,” Rua says.

Running a hand through his hair David rasps, “Cannibalism, Christ. Can you believe that shit? Wasn’t enough to kidnap him. Try to murder him. They were going to cut him up like—like a lamb in a slaughterhouse.”

An odd look passes over Rua’s angular face. “Cannibalism. Right.” He reaches into his desk. After rifling through it for a few minutes he pulls out a business card and hands it to David. “Look there’s an—acquaintance of mine who might be able to tell you more about that that cult was doing. And Diarmuid’s, uh, _unique_ situation.”

David looks at the card.

Then he looks up at Rua, incredulous and furious. “An _occultist_? Are you fucking kidding me? You’re a _doctor_ for Christ’s sake!”

Rua holds up a hand. “Cathal is a researcher, not a practitioner. If you want to find out exactly what happened to Diarmuid, go see him. He’s a good man. Odd as Hell, I’ll admit, but he knows his stuff. He’s well-known in his circles.”

Right, the circles of charlatans and crackpots. Lunatics who kidnapped helpless young men and tried to carve them up like a Thanksgiving turkey. David shoves the business card in his pocket and growls, “I think Diarmuid’s well enough to be discharged.”

The doctor doesn’t argue. “He is. Just make sure to—help him change the bandages on his leg, won’t you?”

“Of course I’ll help him,” David says, confused. Why wouldn’t he? Whatever Diarmuid needs help with, whatever he needs David for—he’ll be there.

After a terse goodbye with Rua he heads to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. The ovens and stoves in the kitchen seem to be working fine, as does the coffee maker. It’s just the lights that are on the fritz. A cafeteria work hands him a hot cup surrounded by old lit candles and a few lanterns.

The stuff tastes just as good as the breakfast, which is to say, not at all. But it’s strong, thank God. He and Diarmuid have a long drive ahead to get back to his apartment and he needs to keep awake.

The military and hospitals, they run on caffeine. So do detectives. He drains his cup and tosses it into the trash.

The two maintenance men are still trying and failing to fix the lights as David walks back to Diarmuid’s room. It’s still as dark as the autumn night outside. Diarmuid is still in his bed. But he’s awake, now.

And there’s a man standing beside him. Dark-haired. Taller than David but not as broad. Eyes like as blue like chips of ice, the corners crinkled as he smiles. There’s sheer delight on the man’s face as he stares down at Diarmuid.

Like a wolf grinning at a rabbit.

He’s so absorbed with leering at the young man he doesn’t hear David approach. But David catches what he murmurs to Diarmuid. “A startling welcome for one so beautiful, I’m sure. I’m very sorry for it.” He raises a hand to brush a curl from young man’s face—Diarmuid whimpers and flinches away from him.

David growls, low and guttural. A warning and a threat for the stranger to keep his hands to himself.

The man turns, startled, but his shock quickly turns into a sneer. “Ah, the hired detective.”

“That’s David!” Diarmuid helpfully supplies. He smiles across the room at David but casts a quick glance at the stranger, clutching the coat to his chest like a shield. David’s protective instincts flare.

“Who are you?” he asks the man.

The answer is told to Diarmuid rather than him. “Raymond de Merville,” he says. The name drips off his lips like oil.

Baron de Merville’s son. The one who called the cops down on the cultists—days after his father had disappeared into the hotel with Geraldus. Already suspicious as fuck. But now de Merville’s gaze is fixed on Diarmuid, staring at him with barely restrained glee. “The Hell do you want?” David demands. He stomps to the other side of the bed and places a hand on Diarmuid's shoulder, relishing in how the young man happily leans into his touch.

de Merville watches the gesture with narrowed eyes. Irritation lines his face. “This was a horrendous event,” he says, “Abominable. To think that something like this could happen here, in this town. My own father, among the murdered.”

Among the murderers, more like. David’s jaw clenches. He wonders if they can hear his teeth grinding together. de Merville continues, “I merely wanted to meet the brave creature who survived such a terrible happening. And offer my services, should he be in need of them,” he adds, with a nod at Diarmuid.

“Services?” David scoffs.

The man eyes the threadbare coat that Diarmuid holds to his chest like it’s the softest, most comfortable blanket in the world. “I certainly have the resources to make sure that he won’t _freeze_. Now,” he addresses Diarmuid, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with me, darling? Let me take care of you.”

Fuck this—this motherfucker who’s monster of a father tried to kill and eat Diarmuid and who’s looking at Diarmuid now as though he’d like to devour him in a completely different way. “Diarmuid’s coming with me,” David snaps. “We’re going to find his father. Get him home.”

With the quirk of an eyebrow and a smug smile de Merville says to the young man, “ _Diarmuid_ , is it? How sweet. I’m sure your father is just frantic without you, isn’t he, _Diarmuid_? Good thing the nice detective is here to help you. Have you told him everything he needs to know to find your _father_?”

Diarmuid goes silent. His hands are folded neatly in his lap. With every odd question he shrinks in on himself. He’s blushing, his face gone splotchy with shame or embarrassment, his eyes wide and wet with tears, his lower lip quivering.

Fuck this, David thinks. Fuck whatever the fuck this is and fuck Raymond de Merville. His temper, already threadbare from his discussion with Rua, snaps in the face of de Merville’s sneer and Diarmuid’s trembling. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re upsetting him.”

He’d be a handsome man, de Merville, if not for his expressions. Condescending, calculating, cold. He steps, slowly, into David’s space so that they are almost nose-to-nose. His lip curls at whatever he sees. An exhausted, down on his luck detective no doubt, but one with enough strength to throttle this pathetic excuse for a man.

There’s violence brewing underneath David’s skin, rushing through his veins like blood with every beat of his heart.

But he has to stay calm. He can’t make a scene here. Not in the hospital, and not with Diarmuid watching, nervous and frightened, from his bed.

David lets out a long, shuddering breath.

The lights flicker like a camera’s flash. de Merville’s eyes flit to the ceiling and then back to David’s snarling face. He turns to Diarmuid. “If you want to waste your time with him, go ahead. I’ll be here, when you come to your senses and accept my offer.”

With that, he turns and leaves the room.

David gently cups Diarmuid’s cheek with his palm. What a hospital. Doctors who consort with occultists, failing, flickering lights, and strange men allowed to wander into patients’ rooms. Best to leave as soon as possible. Hit the road. Maybe they could stop at another diner on the trip back to David’s apartment. Get Diarmuid some decent food. A slice of apple pie with a scoop of ice cream, maybe. Something warm and sweet, just like him.

A soft noise from Diarmuid stirs David from his thoughts. The young man squeezes his hand. He looks sad. “David—will you—even if we find my father—“

“ _When_ we find your father,” David assures him. He won’t rest until Diarmuid’s reunited with his family.

“…When we find him. Will you—will you still like me? Will you still want me?”

Jesus, there he goes again with the _wanting_. David’s mouth goes dry, unsure how to answer and confused by the questions. Is Diarmuid embarrassed by his father? Or does he think that he’s nothing more than another case—that once he’s back where he belongs then David will simply move on to the next person in need of help? Nothing could be further from the truth. And, Hell, David doesn’t think there’s anything that could make him _not_ want Diarmuid

As the silence stretches on the young man sniffles and stares at David forlornly. So pretty and sweet—David wants nothing more than to see him smile. He wants—yeah, he wants Diarmuid. More than anything. To see him safe and happy and comfortable.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he murmurs. “Don’t you worry. I’ll stick with you as long as you can stand me.”

Diarmuid’s face lights up. He smiles wide, eyes bright, cheeks rosy. “Oh, David! I’m so happy!” With a delighted little laugh he throws his arms around David’s neck, pulling him into a hug that is gratefully, happily returned.

When he pulls away the young man pouts. It makes David chuckle. “We’ll be leaving soon—Rua said you’re good to go. There’s extra clothes for you somewhere in here—but let’s change that bandages on your leg first, okay?”

“Yes, David,” Diarmuid purrs. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, still smiling.

David kneels on the floor. It’s hard on his knee—a souvenir from a German sniper that’s healed as well as it could—but the ache will be temporary, and besides, he’ll gladly endure it for Diarmuid.

When his fingers brush against the young man’s leg Diarmuid shivers and makes a small noise that is most definitely _not_ one of pain. He swallows and resolutely focuses on the task at hand.

He slowly, gently unwraps the bandages. Each unraveling reveals a bit more of Diarmuid’s pale, freckled skin, so warm and so soft and so, so perfect and—

Completely healed.

How can that be?

The leg’s completely unblemished. David runs his hand over that pretty, freckled calf, marveling at it. There’s no sign of a wound at all—not even a cut and the stitches are gone, he’s perfect—

He looks up at Diarmuid and finds him watching him, nervous and uncertain, like when de Merville was in the room. “Is it—okay, David?” he quietly asks.

David knows he’s not asking about the cut.

It’s odd, to say the least. But now he knows he wasn’t imagining the bruises disappearing or the initial seriousness of the leg wound. Diarmuid had been badly hurt when he’d found him and his leg had just healed over the course of a few days. It just—it shouldn’t be possible. But—David swallows again. Maybe it would be—wise to talk to this Cathal. To just see what he has to say.

“David?” Diarmuid’s voice is tremulous. He’s still shivering from David’s touch, looking at him hopefully with his big, brown doe eyes. David could spend the rest of his life just staring into those eyes.

He says, truthfully, “It’s fine, sweetheart. You’re perfect. You’re a marvel.” And he presses a kiss to Diarmuid’s calf, savoring the feeling of that soft skin against his lips, the sound of the young man’s shocked, pleased little gasp.

Diarmuid voice hitches as he sighs, “Oh, _David_ —“

The lights left in the hospital go out completely. Not shut off but _extinguished_. A dark like a starless sky floods the room. It washes over them. Covers them in shadow. David can’t see a thing, not the tile beneath his feet, not the closed door, not the curtains or windows, not the shelves with their medical supplies, not even the hospital bed.

There’s only black, black, _black_ , **_black_**.

Just this vast, calm, beautiful dark, and Diarmuid, pale and glowing like the moon, smiling down at him with all the affection in the world in his eyes.


	5. The Road Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David and Diarmuid finally leave the hospital. David realizes some things and decides not to think too hard about others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, back to eldritch noir fic! :)
> 
> This chapter is a little shorter than what I usually do but as always, hope you enjoy!

This doesn’t make sense. This business with the cult and Frère Geraldus, these gruesome murders, Oliver Ward and his involvement, whatever the fuck the de Mervilles were up to—the elder and the younger, dead and alive. None of it makes sense. It’s all connected but David can’t for the life of him figure out _how_. He has no idea what’s happened here. What’s still happening.

All he knows for certain is that Diarmuid is beautiful and smiles so warmly, so gently at him. Like David’s someone worth looking at. Like he’s grateful for his presence. Not just content to sit with him. _Happy_. 

But he has to ask. He _must_ ask. “Diarmuid,” David rasps, “What are you, exactly?”

The worried expression crawls its way back onto the young man’s face. “I’m yours, David,” he says, hopefully, “Aren’t I? I’m all yours.”

From anyone else that would be a pivot, a non-answer. But from Diarmuid it feels like nothing but the most truthful, simple statement. The sky is blue. Water is wet. And Diarmuid is David’s.

He runs his hands up Diarmuid’s legs to rest on his hips, places his head on that soft, creamy thigh like a begging dog. David says, “Long as you want me, I’ll stick around.”

He hopes he’ll be able to stick around forever.

The room is darker than pitch black—it’s black like the depths of the ocean at night, like a yawning void, like the universe before creation—and Diarmuid is otherworldly, ethereal, pale as the moon, glowing, absolutely _glowing_. It’s as though a curtain’s been drawn around them so it’s just the two of them. David and Diarmuid, together here in this darkness.

But they haven’t disappeared; they’re still in the hospital filled with panicking patients and staff unsure why the world has suddenly gone black. David can hear the commotion just outside the door. Screams and shouts and curses and carts and plates and gurneys clattering and crashing to the ground.

There is something strange about Diarmuid, to say the least. He is doing this. He is causing this darkness. _Is_ this darkness—David realizes that now. But he is also—he is also beautiful, and sweet—and—and _David’s_.

The fright and anger that he hears as people fumble for the lights, try to make their way across the hallway, scratch at the walls. They don’t know what he does. How warm this shadow is. Like a thick blanket pulled around his heavy, weary shoulders. How lovely it looks, like a pool of fresh ink, like the blackest summer sky. Vast and grand and _Diarmuid_ , and Diarmuid is David’s to protect, to care for.

The young man gives a sigh, soft a delicate like a bird’s song. It shakes David out of his reverie.

Hospital—they’re in a hospital. The hospital needs light to function—the _people_ need light to function—and Diarmuid needs to get dressed so that they can leave and so that David isn’t tempted to use the hospital bed for other, indecent activities. They will go to the car, they will drive, they will get something to eat, they will go see Cathal and see what insight, if any, he has about these cultists and whether or not he can help— _identify_ Diarmuid.

That’s it, then.

Diarmuid is causing this, Diarmuid is the key to this entire mystery, Diarmuid is the life raft that David is desperately clinging to in this insanity, and Diarmuid is _his_.

Yes, that’s it completely.

David finally answers, “You are. Mine. And I’m yours. But we need to get some clothes on you, sweetheart.”

“ _Oh_.” It’s a slightly shocked, disappointed sound. Diarmuid pouts. The entire room flickers like a negative photo—for an instant everything is blinding white, like sunlight on snow. Everything except for Diarmuid, who seems to have absorbed all the dark and shadow and whose fingers card through his hair and whose features are _gone_ , replaced by black, black, **_black_ **but David knows he’s staring down at him even now because he can _feel_ him looking—can feel the affection even now—

And then David blinks and the lights turn on.

* * *

They leave as soon as they can. Underneath David’s tattered coat Diarmuid wears a white collared shirt, a pair of oversized pants that David helped him roll up, and shoes that were at the height of fashion a decade earlier. Whatever extra clothes the hospital could scrounge up for someone who came in with nothing.

David still thinks the outfit looks great on him. He’s the most gorgeous man in the entire world.

“We’ll go out the back, honey,” David murmurs, taking Diarmuid’s hand in his. It’s so soft and small, but his grip is surprisingly firm.

Whatever just happened, with the shadows and lights—it was ultimately harmless. Nothing but an overabundance of night, seeping into the building like a dark, spilled wine. But while the hospital might not be in shambles, the people inside it sure are. It’d only been for a few minutes but the patients and staff are anxious, quivering messes.

One part of him understands completely. It was strange and incredible. Utterly bizarre. That’s frightening to most.

Another part of him just scoffs; it was only Diarmuid, flustered and overwhelmed by David’s lips on his skin.

Still, he can’t be sure if anyone realizes their connection to what just occurred. Rua, at least, might have an idea. Maybe they won’t try and burn Diarmuid at the stake—not that David would let anyone put their hands on him—but they might try to make them pay for any damages. So they creep carefully but quickly through the hallways, hand-in-hand, passing by frustrated nurses cleaning the contents of upturned carts and maintenance arguing with staff higher-ups about the lamps and ovens and generators.

David can’t help but cast an amused glance at Diarmuid. He says, “You got them all wound up, sweetheart.”

The young man looks a little guilty. “David, I didn’t mean to. But your hands and your lips on me—I’ve never felt anything like it before.” He looks up at David through his lashes. “Will you touch me again? I liked it.”

“ _Later_ ,” David chokes out. “I mean—if you want, but not right now. Later, honey.”

Diarmuid smiles. “Later,” he purrs.

God, they have to get out of this hospital.

His grip on Diarmuid’s hand tightens as they reach the side exit. Just as he pushes the door open a familiar voice says, “Diarmuid. Breathnaíonn tú go maith.”

Rua.

David turns. The doctor stands there, a cigarette burning between his fingers, one eyebrow raised.

“Tá leigheas orm,” Diarmuid says. His smile’s shifted slightly, but it’s gentle, friendly.

Rua smiles in return. “Well, I’m glad you’re better. And that I’ll be getting a bit more peace and quiet.” He takes a long drag of his cigarette. “Bit more light, too, huh?”

David tenses but Rua only gives him a pointed look and a short wave. “Goodbye, detective. Slán, Diarmuid. I hope you find your way home, wherever that may be.”

“Slán, a dhochtúir. Go raibh maith agat as do chineáltas,” Diarmuid responds.

With that, the good doctor walks back inside the hospital, leaving nothing but the lingering scent of tobacco.

* * *

The occultist—this Cathal—is back in the city. Not surprising. There were all sorts crammed in cities. A diverse, wide-ranging, eclectic mass of humanity. It’d be stranger if the odd occultist didn’t pop up here and there.

David’s glad to be leaving this place, with it’s dusty, empty roads and dead, withered grass and it’s _nothing_ save for the shadow that rotting, dilapidated hotel. It might have simply stayed a dusty display of a different time, of excess, of debauchery, but now it’s alive once more. Except instead of ballroom lights and glitzy dancers in shimmering costumes the rooms are lit by camera flash. Tabloid reporters eager for rusted blood and putrid guts missed by the cleaners, for smears of gold paint—the remains of the pentagram. For the stray tooth or bit of bone lodged, inexplicably, in the walls and on the ceiling.

That’ll be what the place is known for, now. Part of its history now, part of its identity. A violent cult ritual gone wrong in relic of a bygone age.

But that’s not the whole story, is it? Something else went on there in that ballroom. Most of the people who know exatly what happened are dead. But there’s at least two still alive that can tell him more about what occurred in that hotel that autumn morning.

One is Raymond de Merville.

The other is sitting right beside him.

And David’s not entirely sure he’s a _person_ , per se. But as he watches the young man out of the corner of his eye, drawn to him like one is instinctively drawn to the sunlight, to its warmth, he is realizes that it doesn’t make a bit of difference to him either way.

Diarmuid is staring out the window. Now that they’re out of that place the color’s come back to the world. Real countryside. The light blue of the sky, the yellow-green of the long grass and the fiery red and orange of the trees, the bursts of white and purple wildflowers. He’s humming something low and rich and completely foreign but somehow still familiar and comforting. It makes David ache for home, and it makes him ache for Diarmuid.

“Sweetheart?” The young man turns to him with a smile. “What did de Merville want to talk to you about? His offer, he said. What did he mean?”

Diarmuid frowns. It’s cute, how his nose scrunches up. “Oh,” he says, “He wanted to lay with me.”

David jerks the wheel. The car nearly flies off the road. It swipes into the grass before he rights it. “He **_what?_** ”

“He wanted to bed me, David. He offered himself as my lover,” Diarmuid clarifies. Matter-of-fact, as if it were a commonplace thing to have men propose to take him to bed. The burning in David’s chest is jealousy and rage. “He said he would be good to me—make me feel pleasure. But—he smells all wrong and—and I don’t want _him_ anyway.”

David asks, “Why would he do that?” Which is a stupid question. He knows why any man would want Diarmuid. He looks like the concept of beauty given human form.

Diarmuid replies, “So I could give part of myself to him, of course. An exchange.”

_Motherfucker_. David’s jaw clenches. He grinds his teeth, trying to hide a snarl. de Merville—what, had he known that Diarmuid was lost? Confused? Traumatized? That he was hurt—for a little bit, at least—and frightened? He’d wanted to trade sexual favors for his assistance? That fucking son of a bitch. _Lay_ with Diarmuid. If David sees him again he’s going to lay de Merville the fuck out. Turn the smug face into nothing but blood and broken teeth. “Did he touch you, sweetheart?” He’s gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. Jesus, the thought of Diarmuid alone and vulnerable in that hospital bed—

But his companion only shakes his head. “No, David. He didn’t. I don’t want him. You’ll be the only man to touch me. I’ll only share myself with you.”

Christ. What red-blooded male wouldn’t want to hear that. The anger inside him recedes. The possessiveness stays.

The desire is always there.

He says, “Diarmuid, sweetheart, you keep talking like that and I might just have to pull over now.”

It’s half a joke and half a warning but Diarmuid’s expression goes coquettish. He reaches across the seat and runs his hand along the inside of David’s thigh. “Would you? I want that. I was waiting for you to take me. I thought you’d have me earlier.”

God, he’d wanted to. David feels his face heat up. “Couldn’t just—not on a _hospital bed_. And there were all those people around.” Not that anyone could have seen them. It’d been pitch black. Just him and Diarmuid touching one another. But he’d heard them, outside the dark—

“There’s no one around here,” Diarmuid murmurs. The window is cracked just slightly. His curls flutter about his head. The inside of the car smells like dried leaves, like light, like the harvest. Like a patient hunger. “Just us, and the fields, and the sun in the sky. It’s pretty. I want to feel the breeze against my skin and your hands and tongue on my body.”

This time David does pull over. Parks right along the side of the road in the grass. Turns the engine off. “You don’t—you know you don’t—don’t owe me anything, right?”

The smile he gets in response is bright and beautiful as anything. Diarmuid says, “Yes, I know. I don’t owe you anything. But I want you to take me.”

He opens the door and casts a glance back at David, his expression playful and sultry, before stepping out and walking into the field.

David watches as he lightly trails his fingers over the grass.

And then he follows after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google translated Irish:
> 
> Breathnaíonn tú go maith. - You look well.
> 
> Tá leigheas orm. - I am healed.
> 
> Slán - Goodbye.
> 
> Slán, a dhochtúir. Go raibh maith agat as do chineáltas. - Goodbye, doctor. Thank you for your kindness.


	6. The Field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David and Diarmuid finally share an intimate moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick, spicy chapter. But I promise, the spice is plot-related, not just spice for spice.
> 
> But do enjoy the spice!

David wades through the grass following eagerly—desperately—after Diarmuid. The young man is smaller than him. Shorter. His stride isn’t as long, his pace is more of a saunter, and yet he’s trailing further and further ahead and further and further away.

It’s a wide stretch of field, a sea of green swaying in the wind, rushing by him. The long grass brushes and scratches at his clothes like a crowd of tiny hands.

A sudden fear bursts in David’s chest. It courses throughout his body. Diarmuid is too far ahead of him. He might fall. He might get hurt. David might blink and the young man might disappear entirely, leaving him alone and yearning in the countryside.

Stranger things have happened to him as of late. Anything is possible, now.

“Diarmuid!” he calls. “Diarmuid, sweetheart, wait for me! Please—“

The rising panic must in his voice must be obvious. Diarmuid turns and stands still as a statue. David’s faded, worn coat is still wrapped around him. His large, dark eyes watch, unblinking, David rushes toward him, grateful for this kindness. This mercy on his aching, worried heart.

Diarmuid smiles and he’s breathtaking. A small, slight, delicate figure with curly brown hair and soft, freckled skin standing amongst the yellow-green long grass, waiting for a lover’s touch.

For _David’s_ touch.

“This is a pretty place,” Diarmuid says when David reaches him. “Here. I want you to have me _here._ ”

David’s throat goes dry. “Bossy,” he rasps. “I want to kiss you first. Can I do that?” It might be a stupid thing to ask—they’re about to have sex right in the middle of a goddamned field after all—but David knows from experience that there are different kinds of intimacies. He's had fucks that were just fucks and fucks that he’d hoped would lead to something more gentle, more tender, and which hadn’t.

But Diarmuid’s eyes light up at the request as if he hadn’t considered it before. “Oh, yes, please. I’d like you to kiss me, David. As much as you like. Where ever you’d like. I’m all yours.”

That phrase again. It makes David’s heart race. “Alright then. I think I want to kiss you here—“ He presses his lips to Diarmuid’s forehead. “And here—“ Next, to his cheek. “And here,” he murmurs against that pretty mouth before kissing it, too.

Diarmuid melts into his arms. He stands on his tiptoes, palms against David’s chest, lips slightly parted as David runs his tongue along the contours of his mouth. His breath is hot and moist.

A soft moan escapes Diarmuid’s throat. “Kiss me more,” he demands.

David runs his hands along Diarmuid’s waist to squeeze his ass. “Bossy,” he says again. He likes it—Diarmuid telling him what he wants. How David can best please him. “Anywhere you want, baby. Let’s—let’s get these clothes off of you.”

First he removes the threadbare coat that is, for all intents and purposes, now Diarmuid’s. As David lays it on the ground and smooths it out so that they won’t later be poked and prodded by the grass, Diarmuid steps out of his shoes. His long, nimble fingers are already unbuttoning his white, collared shirt to reveal pink nipples and a freckled chest and stomach.

When he moves to shimmy out of those oversized pants David gently holds his wrists. “Let me, honey? I want—“ He licks his lips, as eager and anxious as his very first time, “Can I use my mouth on you?”

At the question Diarmuid’s eyes darken—not just dilated pupils but both his eyes blown entirely _black_ —and then he blinks those long lashes and they’re that deep, rich honey-brown again.

Is he doing that? David wonders. When these things happen—the flickering lights and blackout at the hospital, Diarmuid’s—changes, and transformations—is that because of _him_? His attraction to David? The thought shouldn’t be as arousing as it is.

There’s no nervousness in Diarmuid’s face, not an ounce of hesitation. He glows with happiness. “I want you to. I would share myself with you. I would have you drink of me.”

_God_ , yes. David’s mouth waters. He presses another kiss to Diarmuid’s mouth, stealing another taste of his lips before going to his knees, ready to savor his very essence.

The trousers are two times too big. They easily slip down Diarmuid’s waist and then he’s naked as the day they first met.

But what a change in circumstances. In the hotel Diarmuid had been a slight, quaking figure, bruised and bloody and tearful as David towered over him. Now David kneels at his feet like a man at worship, staring up at Diarmuid who stands as beautiful and poised as a Greek statue.

His fingers card through David’s hair, stroke his cheek, brush against the stubble that has been steadily growing into a beard these past few days. David leans into his touch. “What luck, that it was you that rescued me,” Diarmuid murmurs. “That it is you who watches over me and protects me.”

They’re out in the open. Their intentions are obvious to anyone who might pass by. But it’s Diarmuid’s words that make David blush. He stammers, “Sweetheart—I’m just—anyone would’ve done the same—“

The young man’s sharp reply makes David shiver. “ _No_. They would not have. There is not a man like you. There is only you. I’ll have only _you_.” He tilts David’s chin up. “So you must have more faith in yourself, David.” At first David thinks that once again the world’s gone white and Diarmuid dark, but no—it’s the sun shining overhead, bright, brilliant, and the young man’s body shielding him.

He basks in Diarmuid’s shadow. Voice hoarse with sheer desire he answers, “Yes. Yes, of course. Of course.” A knight to his liege—sincere, devoted. A man in the presence of his deity—overwhelmed, reverential. Lover to lover—adoring, affectionate, enthralled.

David kisses the inside of Diarmuid’s thigh, marvels at his warmth, nuzzles at his hardening member, and worships.

Diarmuid gasps when David takes him in his mouth and does not shudder, does not shiver, but _flickers_. Dark to light to flesh, changing in front of David’s eyes.

There is a trifling part of his brain that tells him that this is not normal. His lover should not shift to solid shadow and light and lovely, flushed, pink flesh with each pass of his tongue along his shaft. It is strange and inexplicable and terrifying and utterly _un_ -human.

And yet—

What does it matter how Diarmuid might look when he is so sweet and heavenly on David’s tongue? Bathed in shadow. Bursting with light. His touch is still gentle and affectionate, his moans of pleasure utterly angelic. And David wants him so badly. 

“David,” Diarmuid says, voice a ragged whisper, “ _Oh_ —”

Yes, God. “Let me taste you.” It’s not a command. It’s a plea. “Sweetheart, let me, please—“ He licks the head of Diarmuid’s cock and sucks it back into his mouth, hollowing his cheeks, fingers digging into the soft flesh of Diarmuid’s hips as he swallows him down to the root, nose brushing into the hair between his legs.

Diarmuid comes with a cry. A familiar taste. Warm, salty. But somehow sweeter, more delicious. Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods. He drinks it gratefully, like a man dying of thirst.

“D-David—“ Diarmuid’s knees tremble. David quickly maneuvers him on his back on top of the coat. He lies there spent and flushed.

“Easy, honey.” Still so pretty and pink. The color of his blush makes Diarmuid’s freckles stand out, every one a point that David intends to place his tongue. He tucks a sweaty, unruly curl behind the young man’s ear. “You like that?”

Diarmuid purrs. “Yes, David.” He stretches, splayed out on the coat. “Now, I want you inside me.”

_Bossy_. A laugh of disbelief escapes David’s throat. “We don’t—I don’t have any lube, honey.” He’d just been planning to just finish to the sight Diarmuid. Touching himself, spilling in his hand and onto the grass, looking at the lithe and lovely vision before him.

“I don’t need that,” Diarmuid says.

At that David frowns. “Yeah, you do, Diarmuid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

A knowing smile graces the young man’s lips. His eyes turn black like spilled ink seeping through paper. “No, you won’t, David. You’d never hurt me. And you won’t hurt me. I don’t need anything else except you inside of me. I want you to claim me. Make me _yours_.”

_Jesus fucking Christ_. David groans. Fuck, yes, he will. He unbuckles his belt and unbuttons his trousers to free his aching cock. To his immense pleasure, Diarmuid watches with heady interest. “On your hands and knees for me, sweetheart?” he asks as he undresses.

That gorgeous face brightens. Diarmuid cheerfully turns, gets on all fours, and lifts his hips. _Fuck_ , those little freckles are all over him. David eagerly spreads Diarmuid’s cheeks and gently presses his forefinger against his tight, pink little rim. Diarmuid, so calm and collected just a moment before, whines at his touch. “ _David_ —“

He cries out as David licks a broad stripe from the underside of his balls to his rim. Diarmuid pushes back against David’s mouth as he licks and sucks and kisses. It’s not nearly enough. He slowly presses one finger into Diarmuid along with his tongue, then another. If this is all they’ll do today—Christ, Diarmuid tastes amazing—but he wants David _inside_ him and—

A shudder and a cry and David watches, mesmerized, as Diarmuid comes again, spilling all over the coat. He rubs gentle circles with his palm over the small of Diarmuid’s back, soothing him through another orgasm. He kisses a freckle along the young man’s spine. “God, yeah, look how gorgeous you are.” And all David’s—every inch of him is David’s. Diarmuid had said so himself. “Still want me, sweetheart?”

“W-why wouldn’t I still want you?” Diarmuid turns his head to glance over his shoulder with a puzzled expression. His skin is so soft. David trails kisses up his back to shoulders.

He replies, “Want you to feel good. You already came twice, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

There’s a tiny, irritated huff. Diarmuid says, “David, I _need_ your cum in me.”

Okay, well— David blinks, struck silent by the statement. He won’t argue. His hands settle on Diarmuid’s hips.

It won’t be a hardship. The real difficulty will be trying not to spill after just a few thrusts. He licks his lips—the salt-sweet taste of Diarmuid’s cum on his lips—and takes his cock in hand, lining it up with Diarmuid’s entrance and pushing in.

Sex isn’t new to David. Quick, curious fumblings as a teenager, riding the railways with other outcasts and runaways. The outpouring of affection on V-E day, everyone offering and accepting affection. One-night stands at dark, smoky bars once back in the States, always gone in the morning.

No one’s ever felt as good as Diarmuid. The young man’s hot and tight and clenching around his cock as if he’s trying to keep David inside him. David’s thrusts are frantic, desperate. It’s a haze of animalistic pleasure; he wants nothing more than to be on top of Diarmuid, kissing the back of his neck, claiming him as his for all to see.

“God, sweetheart—“ He scrapes his teeth over Diarmuid’s shoulder.

The young man lets out a sweet little whimper. His fingers tear at the grass. “Oh, David, _please_ —“

The sounds they’re making are debauched. David’s constant, low moaning, Diarmuid’s gasping pants, the slap of skin on skin, David’s wet, open-mouthed kisses.

Fuck, it’s so good. _Diarmuid_ feels so good. He chases his pleasure, rutting with abandon, hips pumping frantically, his sweat dripping onto Diarmuid’s body.

Underneath him Diarmuid arches his back and trembles through his third orgasm. He squeezes around David’s cock.

David fucks into him, hard and fast, until he follows after. He comes so hard he sees stars. His vision blurs. With each rope of cum spilling inside him Diarmuid lets out a broken moan, rocking his hips back to grind against David’s pelvis.

_Christ_. David hugs Diarmuid to him, nuzzling into the back of his sweaty curls. They're both panting with exertion. Best he’s ever had—out here in a field in the middle of nowhere with the most beautiful lover in the entire world.

“Happy, baby?” He nibbles at the young man’s ear. “Got what you wanted?”

“ _Mm_.”

He sounds pleased, but he won’t turn around.

David says, “C’mere, let me kiss you.”

Diarmuid sits up but covers his face with his hands. “You won’t like me.”

What? David can’t help but chuckle at the ridiculousness of that. “What are you talking about, sweetheart? I like you. We just had _sex_. Are you okay? You don’t want me to kiss you?”

At that Diarmuid vigorously shakes his head. “I _want_ you to. But—I—you felt so _wonderful_ and I—I lost myself.”

Between his fingers slivers of shadow peek out, twitching like spiders’ legs.

Suddenly understanding, David places both hands on Diarmuid’s hips. “Hey, that—that doesn’t matter to me. I’ve seen you when you’re—“ All black and darkness? Like his own beautiful piece of the night? “— _different_.”

Some of the tension leaves Diarmuid’s shoulders. “But I—before I was one or the other. This time I’m all mixed up.” Slowly, he lowers his hands and places them in his lap.

David sees a marbled pattern of shadow and flesh. Half of Diarmuid’s face is dark like an eclipse. Featureless. The other half stares miserably at him. “I’m not pretty how you like me,” Diarmuid murmurs.

David is vaguely aware that he should not be as calm about this as he currently is. But then, he’s been quite calm about a lot of strange happenings lately. Mainly because those strange things involve Diarmuid, and Diarmuid’s—

_His_.

He says, “Was I that good? Got you all out of sorts? Hey, I still want to kiss you, if you’d let me.”

Some of the apprehension leaves Diarmuid. He sits up a little straighter and smiles. His teeth stretch into the dark side of his face. “Please?”

He can’t deny Diarmuid anything. His lips are still soft and plush, he’s still warm and flushed with pleasure they just shared.

“You’re still mine, right? And I’m still yours?” David asks.

“Of course!”

“Then that’s all that matters. Just you and me.” He helps him up, holds him close. “Let’s get dressed. We still have a drive ahead of us.”

What did it matter what Diarmuid looked like? So long as he was still sweet against David’s lips and warm in his arms—his, and only his.


	7. The Occultist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David and Diarmuid have a mostly pleasant breakfast. Then they have an important talk with Rua's friend Cathal, the occultist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a bit of trouble with this chapter. I hope it makes sense, and I hope you enjoy it!

They clean up as best they can, dress, and return to the car.

A heady, intoxicating scent permeates the vehicle. It’s almost primal. Dirt and sweet grass, sweat and sex. Even with the windows rolled down to let in the chill autumn air their bodies are warm with the heat of their passion and lingering arousal.

Diarmuid is satisfied. He purrs like a cat, curling up in his seat, the deliciously ruined coat draped across his lap like a blanket. Every once in a while he turns ever so slightly to smile and run his hand along David’s inner thigh.

That smile would make any man feel like he could best anyone. Anything. Hell, if Diarmuid had been on the film reels during the war—there’d have been a stampede to enlist. David could take on the world just knowing that Diarmuid’s big, brown doe eyes were full of adoration for _him_.

But it wasn’t the world he had to face. It was this case. _His_ case. One unlike any other, to put it mildly, but still a mystery, a puzzle for David to solve.

First a meal for the two of them, then to the occultist for answers—if the man was worth a damn. Then to the Wards to settle his account and see how they were settling into grief. Then—

Well, then home, hopefully. To his apartment. Introduce Diarmuid to Mrs. Zielinski and work on finding his father.

Because David _will_ find the man, no doubt about that. There isn’t anyone who’s been able to hide from him for long, not when he’s on their trail. But now his priorities have changed. Just a bit. Now, when imagining the happy reunion David also dares to conjure up a vision of shaking the man’s hand as he asks for his son’s hand in marriage.

One step at a time.

“You hungry, sweetheart? I’ll get you something better to eat than a tray of hospital food. What do you say?”

Diarmuid bats his eyelashes. “That would be nice. I _am_ hungry.” He stretches and says, “Could I taste you tonight? I want you in my mouth.”

Goddamn. David lets out a strangled laugh. “You like teasing me, huh? Making me blush?” he fondly asks as Diarmuid giggles. It’s such a sweet sound.

“I like smelling your arousal,” the young man replies, “I like that you smell like that when you look at me. That I cause that. I’m _glad_ that you want me.” He wiggles in his seat.

“There’s not a man alive who wouldn’t want you, Diarmuid.”

“I just want _you_.” How many times has Diarmuid said that? Every time he does David’s heart beats so hard in his chest it threatens to bruise his ribs. He’ll never get tired of hearing it. Hopes it never stops.

He says, “You got me.” Diarmuid beams while David plans to get a nice hotel room, some place with fresh, clean sheets and a nice, soft bed that will be heavenly once he gets Diarmuid naked in it.

The scenery shifts. The wide, empty, grassy fields becomes dotted with farmhouses and livestock and then turns into bustling towns and then—he glances aside as Diarmuid stares in wonder—transforms into the steel and skyscraper city with people milling about like ants.

But as they sit at a traffic light Diarmuid whimpers and curls up in his seat. “What’s wrong?” David asks.

“It’s loud, David. And—there’s so many _smells_.” His nose wrinkles. “It’s confusing. It makes me _dizzy_.”

Shit, that’s not good. His immediate instinct is to protect—to drive right out of the city and never look back. He hates the idea of Diarmuid being uncomfortable. But they need to stay—for now, at least. And Diarmuid hadn’t been able to handle the light and the noise when they first met, but he seems to have acclimated. Maybe he just needs a little more time. Hell, it’d taken David a while to get used to the sheer crowds and noise back when he’d arrived.

“I felt the same way when I first came to the city,” David says, “Overwhelmed.”

Diarmuid straightens up a little at that. He asks, surprised, “You, David?”

“Yeah, you bet. I was just some kid from the countryside. Most of the food my parents put on the table they hunted and gutted themselves. Wasn’t like around here.” He nods at the vendors hawking their wares—arrays of fresh fruit, hot dogs with bottles of pop, assortments of ice cream flavors. “Then, you know, the Crash happened and everyone was down on their luck. And my parents were worse off than before. Had to leave.”

“They kicked you out?” The outrage is plain in Diarmuid’s voice.

David replies, “Did I leave with a boot print on my ass? Nah. But they made it pretty clear a teenager my size—and with my appetite—wasn’t welcome anymore. And, Hell, what did I care? I wanted out of there. I wanted adventure.” He pauses, momentarily lose in the memory of the sound of shifting train cars, the whistle, the smell of cigarette smoke, men and women playing cards, huddled in two, three, four layers of clothes to keep warm. “First time to the city—never saw that many people before. Everyone rushing to get someone. And no one was hiring. Everyone had the same idea as me. Streets were overflowing with kids turned out of their homes.”

Diarmuid asks, quietly, “What did you do then, David?”

“Kept moving. Odd jobs here and there. Some people were nice. Some weren’t. Then the war came so I joined up. Fought some. War ended.” He shrugs. “When I came back—well, detective work seemed as good a job as any.”

“Then you found me, David,” the young man finishes with a hopeful look, “You have me.”

Chuckling, David says, “I did. And you’re _real_ nice, aren’t you, honey?”

Diarmuid preens, pleased. “I’ll take care of you, David.” Then, a little more determined, “And—I’ll get used to the city, too—just like you did. I’m feeling better now.”

“There we go!” David grins. “We’ll get some decent food in you and you’ll be ready to take on the world, right?”

“Of course, David.” Diarmuid’s eyes flash black and lovely as he smiles.

* * *

He chooses a familiar diner. It’s clean enough, got good food, wait staff that isn’t particularly nosy or chatty.

After staring around the diner like a visitor might look at a palace, Diarmuid peers at the menu. “What should I have?” He wrinkles his nose. “I had scrambled eggs at the hospital.”

“They’re better here, believe me. But get whatever you want, sweetheart.”

Diarmuid takes him up on that. He chooses a mess of sweets. Pancakes and waffles in syrup topped with a pat of butter and fresh sliced strawberries. Lemonade that he sips from a straw. A slice of apple pie, a classic, and a slice of grasshopper pie—chocolate crust and mint filling—the perfect end to an array of desserts, David supposes.

He states his own appetite with a more traditional breakfast. A much more appetizing pile of scrambled eggs, crispy hash browns fried in butter, slice of bacon with a side of biscuits to sop up the fat.

And coffee. Thank Christ for the coffee. When the waitress ambles over to refill his cup she nods at the carnage that is their plates. “Hungry, weren’t you?”

“We were in the hospital,” Diarmuid says, looking up from his pie.

The statement makes David wince but the woman doesn’t bat an eye. “Ah, no wonder, then. You’ve worked up an appetite, haven’t you?”

Diarmuid licks the whipped cream off his spoon, his big brown eyes on David. “We _did_.” He smiles.

The waitress ignores David’s reddening face as she tops off his coffee. There’s got to be worse things she’s heard, he tells himself as she wanders off to the next group of diners. He sits his elbows on the table and leans in close to Diarmuid. “We’re going to see someone.”

“Who?”

“There’s a man that Rua said we should go see. For your—“ David realizes while he’s speaking that he hasn’t got the faintest fucking idea what to call Diarmuid’s unique abilities and appearance. What to call _Diarmuid_.

And yet he does, doesn’t he? _His_ , Diarmuid is simply his—

But that’s not all that Diarmuid is. And he needs to find out what happened in that hotel. He needs to find out what happened to Oliver Ward. He needs to find out what killed those people. He needs to find out what it was that Frère Geraldus and the rest of the cultists wanted. He needs to find Diarmuid’s father.

“For your situation,” David finishes.

A small hand with lovely, slender fingers confidently reaches over and plucks a strip of bacon from David’s plate. Diarmuid sniffs it and brings it to his lips to nibble, then happily wolfs it down. “I like Dr. Rua,” he says around a mouthful of bacon.

The doctor’s voice echoes in David’s head. _Bit more light_ , _too_ , he’d said.

What were his thoughts on the matter? At the time David had been too angry to mine him for details, to ask him his theories. But whatever doubts he’d had about what occurred in the hotel, he’d kept quiet about it to the police. David admits, “Yeah, he’s a good man.”

He reaches across the table to take Diarmuid’s other hand in his, gently rubbing his knuckles with his thumb.

“Hey!” A man sitting at the counter is calling them. “You said you were in the hospital?”

David tenses. He turns to the man but doesn’t remove his hand from Diarmuid’s. “You eavesdrop a lot?” he asks.

The man ignores him. “And you’re not from around here,” he continues, “Saw the plates on your car.”

Eyes narrowed, David growls, “Yeah?”

“Paper today said that a lot of them cultists were from out-of-state.”

David says nothing.

“Said that the police found a survivor.”

_Fuck_. Diarmuid’s fingers tense around his. He’s got to bluff, but there’s no need to fake anger. It’s easy. There’s a well of anger in his chest to be drawn from. At times he thinks it’s mostly anger that keeps him going. “The fuck you accusing me of?” he snarls.

The man flinches in the face of his bared teeth, his curled lip. The waitress stands behind the counter, wary. The other customers seem unsure as to whether to continue eating or to watch. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

He pauses, as if thinking over the man’s words, and then shifts the reason for his rage. “You talking about my husband, then? Huh?” The man shakes his head. “Yeah, you were, you fuck.” At that the poor sap turns to Diarmuid, perhaps to apologize, but David steps out of the booth to block him. It’s as natural as breathing, protecting Diarmuid. “What the fuck are you looking at him for?”

“Look, mister, I didn’t mean anything by it—”

“Then why’d you even say anything?”

Flustered and fearful the man stammers, “I don’t—I don’t know—I was just saying—“

“If you two are going to fight you better do it outside,” the waitress says, firmly.

David loses some of his bluster for a moment. He’s made a scene—but then, he thinks again, the employees here have probably seen worse. Nevertheless he pulls enough money from his wallet to cover both their bill and give the woman a hefty tip for her trouble. “Nah, forget it. Come on, sweetheart, we’re leaving.”

The entire time David’s been making the man sweat Diarmuid’s simply watched him, eating bite after bite of pie. At his words he carefully sets down his spoon, wipes his lips with a napkin, and stands to take David’s hand.

“Thank you for the food,” he says to the waitress, “It was much better than at the hospital.”

Once they’ve peeled out of the parking lot and David’s breathing returns to normal Diarmuid asks, “Husband?”

_Shit_. “Sorry, honey, I was just trying to—I didn’t mean to assume anything or—“

But Diarmuid just settles comfortably in his seat. “I’d like for us to join together in as many ways as possible.”

Which is just—something to look forward to, after all this is over.

* * *

They arrive at an apartment building.

Because of course the occultist’s office is also his apartment. Why did David expect to end up at a university or a library? No doubt the apartment is some sort of hotbed of supernatural rituals and rites sandwiched between couples and families always complaining about strange chanting at odd times of the night and the smell of blood and incense wafting down the hallway.

David sighs. Was it a waste of time to come here?

But they continue on nevertheless. Third floor, sixth room on the left as they exit the elevator. Diarmuid holds his hand as they wander through the building, the contentment so plain on his face that an elderly man shuffling by smiles at them and murmurs something about young love.

What will this Cathal have to say? David’s tense. “Stay behind me, sweetheart,” he tells Diarmuid. “Rua’s friend or not, I don’t know what to expect from this guy.” Probably nothing but a crackpot, but it never hurt to be on the safe side. Diarmuid nods.

He gives three steady knocks on the door and waits for a response.

Nothing.

David glances back at Diarmuid. The young man’s watching the ceiling lights with interest. He turns back to the apartment and knocks again with greater force—the door shakes on its hinges.

A flustered, irritated voice calls from inside. “If this is about the human-skin grimoire, you’ll be happy to know it turned out to be _horse._ But even if it wasn’t it’d still have been perfectly legal to own.”

Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. David’s jaw clenches as he grits his teeth. From behind he hears Diarmuid ask, puzzled, “Horse?”

With a groan of frustration David answers, “Don’t know shit about that. Rua sent us. It’s about—“

The door swings open. There stands a slight, wild-eyed man with thinning brown hair. He has on a pair of trousers that look like they’ve been singed, a collared shirt that might’ve been white at one point in time, suspenders, a tweed jacket, and overtop of that a lavender bathrobe. In his hands he holds a perfume bottle, the contents of which he promptly sprays in David’s face.

David shouts, “What the _fuck_ —“ as he blinks away whatever the fuck this fucking asshole just sprayed into his eyes, God—

As he wipes his eyes he squints and sees the occultist nod to himself and then mists Diarmuid with the stuff. The young man yelps in surprise. He blinks rapidly, an expression of utter confusion on his face as droplets of the liquid drip from his curls. “David? What is this?”

What did he just do to Diarmuid? Cathal looks satisfied. “Right, well, that’s settled and out of the way, so— _urk!_ ” He gasps as David grabs his throat and forces his ay into the apartment.

There’s no blood and guts and sigils everywhere as David expected, but the place is a mess. Crowded with loose papers and crystals and _bones_ and overflowing bookshelves. The walls are pinned with sketches and scribbles in various languages. On a desk is a crucifix. On an end table is another.

He shoves Cathal onto a couch. The movement upends a pile of journals stuffed with notes that was stacked onto the seat. Papers flutter around them as the occultist coughs and rubs his throat.

“You mother _fucker_!” David snarls. “What the fuck did you spray us with?” He gathers Diarmuid into his arms; the young man is wiping his face with his hands.

Cathal doesn’t look too perturbed. He coughs and says, “It was holy water. Just to make sure that neither of you were—you know. Demons.”

“Demons?”

“Well, Rua called and filled me in on the situation as far as he knew. He said you two might show up. And, well, he’s a doctor but _I’m_ the one qualified to identify the otherworldly and paranormal.”

“With a perfume bottle,” David says, a little less angry and a little more incredulous. He puts an arm around Diarmuid’s waist and pulls him close.

Cathal says, “A perfume bottle full of holy water. Blessed by three priests. I have a theory that it makes a stronger brew, so to speak. Three, the holy trinity, you know. But I haven’t found any demons to test it out on yet.” He mutters under his breath, “I wish the two of you had been demons. My research—well, no matter. I didn’t think you would be but I needed to rule out the possibility. You understand.”

“Not really,” David says, flatly. “We’re here to talk about the cult. I need to know exactly what they were up to. I need answers.”

There’s a clock somewhere in the apartment. David can’t see it—it’s probably hidden behind another heap of papers—but he can hear it. As Cathal stares at him with a befuddled expression it tick, tick, _ticks_.

“I’m not sure I have any more insight to the situation than you do,” he says. But as David sighs Cathal continues, “I mean, it seems as though D’midh’s told you already. Frère Geraldus and his followers summoned him from his plane of existence into a human form with the intention of devouring him and attaining his powers. They just weren’t expecting such resistance, were they, D’midh?”

Diarmuid is silent for a long moment. The clock ticks. “They were going to kill me,” he finally murmurs.

David’s head is reeling. Cathal’s readily explained and accepted what he’s been both trying to shy away from and trying to wrap his head around. Yes, Diarmuid— _D’midh_ —had told him all that. It’d been David who’d misunderstood everything, from his name to the cult’s intentions.

The text in Geraldus’s journal rushes to the forefront of his mind.

_Into flesh, into blood, into bone_ _._

_They were going to eat me_ , Diarmuid had told him, _That’s what the knife was for_.

But not cannibalism, like David had thought.

Transubstantiation _._

_Communion, communion,_ ** _communion_**.

Cathal is still talking. “It was self-defense. They kidnapped and tried to murder you. I’m no lawyer, but I think that’d be an easy day.”

That snaps David out of his thoughts. “Are you insane? You think we could just tell the cops that Diarmuid _massacred_ a bunch of people and it’s alright because he’s actually a—a _being_ from another dimension?”

“Plane of existence,” Cathal corrects. “Are you feeling well? You look pale. Was this—erm, new information?”

A cascade of anger washes over him. “I know more about Diarmuid than you **_ever_** will!” he snarls. But not enough, apparently. Not enough to connect all those dots. But what rational man would have? He could only take it bit by bit, but now he’s got near an entire picture.

Oliver Ward was murdered before the ritual.

Something killed the cultists at the hotel.

Diarmuid was at the hotel.

The cultists tried to kill and eat him.

Diarmuid is inhuman. So wonderfully, beautifully, terrifyingly inhuman.

That something was _Diarmuid._ Diarmuid killed everyone else in that hotel.

And David’s long ignored that possibility because he adores Diarmuid. The whole situation is irrational, sheer insanity, but fuck, maybe David’s insane himself.

The lights are flickering, dark and light, dark and light.

Diarmuid is crying.

His eyes are completely black once more. He’s weeping pitch—it seems to be seeping from his eye sockets and trails down his cheeks. “Are you angry with me? I told you before, David—I told you everything. Please, don’t be angry. I told you, I was with my father. I heard that man talking and then suddenly I was there, at that hotel. All those people were there. I didn’t know what was happening and everything _hurt_ and they _cut me_ and I was _scared_ and I fought, I told you, I fought as best I could and then I passed out and then—And then you saved me, David—“ He sobs, “David, you said it was okay. You said I was _yours_.”

There it is. That one truth that he’s been clinging to. Nothing about this entire situation—this ordeal—makes sense, but—

God, as natural as the air filling his lungs when he breathes, he and Diarmuid fit together.

He cups Diarmuid’s cheek. Wipes away a tear of thick shadow. It sticks to his thumb like dust from a charcoal drawing. When he speaks his voice is hoarse. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’m not angry. You told me everything right from the beginning. I just didn’t get it. Just—just a pretty shit detective, huh?”

“You’re the best of men, David!” Diarmuid cries. He wraps his arms around David’s neck, nuzzles into the crook of his shoulder.

“And you’re mine,” David murmurs. He rubs Diarmuid’s back, soothes him with his touch and is soothed in return. “Just like I’m yours.”

A phone rings—the sound is muffled. Cathal stands, saying, “Yes, well, I’ll—I’ll just get that, shall I?” He quickly makes his way to the kitchen.

Tears still roll down Diarmuid’s face. David holds him all the tighter. “Come on, honey, I’m not mad. I knew you were different, I just—“ Intentionally ignored as much of the situation as he could in the face of Diarmuid’s beauty and their desire for one another. “I wanted you,” he admits.

“You have me,” Diarmuid murmurs, “If you still want me.”

There’s no question about that. He catches Diarmuid’s lips for a much needed kiss. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

As he hugs Diarmuid tight David thinks about the next step. He still doesn’t know Ward’s exact involvement. Dead before Diarmuid was summoned. Did they not want to share Diarmuid’s flesh and blood? Whatever power he holds? But why only kill Ward then? There were more than thirty people there that day.

What’s he going to tell Ward’s grieving parents? That their son just missed being dismembered by an otherworldly being because he’d been murdered by his supposed friends beforehand?

And Raymond de Merville—that _fucker_. He knew what his father was up to. He knows what Diarmuid is. He’s known the entire time. That offer, at the hospital—he’d _taunted_ Diarmuid and tried to—

What to do? Where to go next? This is still such a mess.

They both turn as Cathal rushes back to them. Worry is etched on his face. “Rua’s on the phone for you, detective. There might be a problem. Did you see the papers this morning? The police have found a survivor from the hotel.”

David frowns. “Diarmuid. _I_ found _Diarmuid_ at the hotel. Before the police showed up.”

The occultist shakes his head. “No, that was days ago. They found someone else. They found Frère Geraldus.”


	8. What Next?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David talks to Rua about this unpleasant news. He and Diarmuid enjoy another intimate moment, and David makes some plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with some more spice. It's been a while since we've seen this detective and his eldritch boyfriend.

Diarmuid doesn’t take Cathal’s grim pronouncement well. He pales and whimpers, “But I thought I _killed_ him!” His voice quavers. “Everyone—everyone who tried to hurt me—I thought I—David, what’s going to _happen?_ ”

As his voice grows higher with panic he flickers like old, damaged film. Cathal lets out a surprised cry and flails for a notebook and pen, apparently intent on observing and recording the affects of Diarmuid’s emotional state on his physical form.

“ _Hey_ ,” David snarls. But the occultist pays him no mind. He scribbles chicken scratch on paper at an impressive speed.

Fuck it. Let him do what he wants. Cathal’s weird as fuck but ultimately harmless. The real concern at the moment is that Frère Geraldus, the man who’d most likely murdered Oliver Ward for whatever reason and who lead more than two dozen people into kidnapping and attempting to _eat_ Diarmuid, is still alive. Diarmuid’s upset, scared, and rightly so, and Rua’s still on the phone with perhaps more bad news. David takes a long, deep breath.

He’s always had the ability to deal with tense, uncertain situations. To plan his next move, to find his way out, to push through, to endure and survive. When his parents had decided he was too expensive to care for and threw him out of the house. When guards boarded the railway cars and greeted stowaways with nightsticks and spit and kicks. When he wasn’t even allowed to stop in a town to rest and the sheriff and his deputies escorted him to the road by gunpoint, sneering that the only place for itinerant young men was the road, and he’d best keep walking.

When the war started—really started—for his squad unit, when the mortar shells shook the earth and bullets sought to sink into flesh and bone. When a job went wrong, and someone he was hired to investigate got tired of his snooping and tried to put an end to it by meeting him with two friends and a switchblade. David hadn’t always kept _calm_ —the incident with that mouthy fucker in the diner flashed through his mind—but he’d always managed to navigate his way through danger, potential and real.

In the long run? David has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do. But here, now, with Cathal fluttering around and Diarmuid confused and frightened and Rua still waiting on the phone and he himself reeling from a number of surprising revelations, David steps into action. He’ll protect Diarmuid at any cost. As soon as he gathers more information and gets a feel for the situation then he’ll know how to proceed.

“You,” he barks, pointing at the occultist, “Stay here with Diarmuid. Just—keep an eye on him.” Cathal idly nods. He’d have probably done so, anyway, just for his research.

To Diarmuid he says, more quietly but just as firmly, “Sit tight, sweetheart. I’ll take care of this.”

The young man sniffles and nods. He places his hands in his lap, his gaze on Cathal’s coffee table. It’s littered with various bones from various animals, all etched with some sort of inscriptions, a small, aged, bronze-green statue of a robed figure with the head of a snarling lion, and a lace doily.

All of Cathal’s belongings are eclectic. David wades through the apartment to the kitchen where a rotary phone sat on the table, handset facedown on the wooden surface.

David picks it up. In lieu of greeting he says, “You must be used to delivering bad news.”

On the other end of the line Rua lets out a short laugh without much humor. “Not quite like this. How’s Diarmuid?”

“Upset. Scared.”

“I understand why, but I don’t know if—” The doctor pauses. “Well, I’ll just tell you what I know. Geraldus is alive.”

“Cathal told us that. It’s in the papers.” Their breakfast at the diner, what that man had said—David had thought that someone had leaked word of Diarmuid’s identity to some reporter. But the guy must’ve been talking about Geraldus. “Where’d they find him?”

“Here’s the thing,” Rua drawls, “He turned himself in.”

“He what?”

Behind him David can hear Cathal and Diarmuid quietly conversing. The occultist is asking questions about Diarmuid’s life before being summoned and put into human form. What does it look like, where he’s from? Are there other creatures? Plants? Animals? Does he need to eat?

Diarmuid sounds puzzled by the inquiries. “I had pie today,” David hears him answer.

Rua continues, “Geraldus turned himself in. Showed up at the police station all bruised and like he’d been wandering the woods for a week, spouting all sorts of insane shit. Like how Diarmuid murdered everyone at the hotel.” A wry tone creeps into Rua’s voice. “Just completely out there, isn’t he?”

“Absolutely.” Who’d believe it? As far as anyone else knew it was just a cult leader’s desperate ramblings, blaming the young man that he and his people had kidnapped and tried to sacrifice to some demonic entities.

“Something else. When they brought him to the hospital he panicked. Fought the police and the nurses. One of my staff has a black eye. But Geraldus didn’t want to be anywhere _dark_. He said something was _following_ him through the shadows. That’s why he went to the police. He wants a safe, cozy little padded cell with the lights turned on at all times.”

David frowns. That sure sounds like he’s frightened of Diarmuid. Good, he thinks, viciously. That motherfucker ought to be.

But there’s no way that the young man could’ve been tormenting Geraldus. In all this time David’s rarely left Diarmuid’s side and besides, he hadn’t been aware that Geraldus was even alive until a few minutes ago. “He still in custody?” David asks.

“As far as I know, yes. They’re going to throw the book at him. He’s the best chance they have to clear those murders.”

And only one that he might’ve actually committed. The image of Oliver Ward’s lifeless corpse sprang to David’s mind. A stab wound in his side. His face frozen in an expression of confusion.

Fucking goddamn it. He could let the man take the fall for the rest of the dead—those ghoulish monsters who’d made Diarmuid flesh and blood only to try and rip him apart and suck the marrow from his bones—but Geraldus might still have answers about exactly what happened to Oliver Ward.

That’d been what David had been looking for in the first place. Answers for the man’s fretful parents, concerned that their son had gotten involved in something nasty. But would the police even let him talk to Geraldus? Would the cult leader have anything worthwhile to say if they did? Did the _why_ matter any more than the _how?_

It wasn’t his decision to make. He’d have to go see the Wards and ask them what they wanted. David had found their son, had sent his body to them, told them what he’d uncovered. But if there was more to the story, if he hasn’t exhausted every possible resource—

Then he hasn’t done his job.

* * *

He thanks Rua for his call and returns to Diarmuid and Cathal, who are still deep in conversation.

“So, it’s a bit like a sea sponge? Reproducing by budding?” Cathal asks.

Diarmuid says, “What’s a sea sponge? I came from my father.”

“But no mother?”

“Why would I need a mother?”

“Perhaps we’re having some linguistic difficulties. After all, you don’t speak English where you’re from, do you?”

With an expression of absolute bewilderment, Diarmuid asks, “What’s English?”

David clears his throat. Both men turn to look at him. “Rua told me that Geraldus is in police custody. I don’t think they’re taking anything he says very seriously, but we have to be careful. Who knows what he’s told them, or what he’ll say in the future.”

“Will he try and hurt me again?” Diarmuid asks. “Will he try and take me away?”

“ _Never_ ,” David growls. “I won’t let him.”

Cathal chimes in, “That ritual that they performed. It’s very specific. They took Diarmuid from his own plane of existence and brought him here in human form. It’s a summoning, and Diarmuid’s been summoned. Geraldus can’t do it again. Especially not in a jail cell. Lord knows it’s difficult to do any kind of spell when you’re in police custody…”

What an interesting person Cathal turned out to be. “Is there anything else you might be able to tell us? About the ritual, or the cultists, or—just, anything that could be helpful?” David asks.

“While this is all extremely fascinating, I’m afraid it’s also brand new to me. I’ve never seen or heard of a summoning actually taking place before.” Cathal purses his lips. “At least, I’ve never heard of one being successful before now.”

“Diarmuid’s— _transformations_. Should we worry about those?” David glances at the young man, who blushes pink at the question.

“Oh, I’d say it’s fine. You’re just as human as David or myself, Diarmuid. It’s just that, well. You’re also still everything you were before. It seems you get a bit muddled in stressful situations but then, who doesn’t? I expect when you get more used to your new form it’ll stop happening.”

Diarmuid grins. “Thank you, Cathal.”

He has such a beautiful smile. David’s never seen anything prettier than the sight of Diarmuid, happy and calm and safe. “Thank you for your help,” he says to Cathal. “Really. I appreciate it.”

“Oh, come back any time,” Cathal says. He flips through his notebook and quickly writes something down. “Here, take my phone number. This has all been quite fascinating. If you need me, just give me a call. We can have brunch, and discuss my making revisions to my thesis.”

* * *

They go to a hotel. A nice one, with a chandelier hanging from the lobby ceiling and a restaurant. David slips the concierge a few extra bills and asks him to find Diarmuid a decent outfit—shirt, shoes, pants, the works—and to keep whatever’s extra.

It can’t be the weirdest thing that a guest’s ever asked, because the man doesn’t even bat an eye. Just smiles, nods, and sets off.

Their room isn’t the biggest or the best, but it’s more luxury than David’s used to. Everything is scrupulously clean, from the floral patterned carpet to the dark blue curtains. There’s queen-sized bed, a little bar with small bottles of alcohol—decent stuff, nothing cheap or watered down—and a few potted plants here and there.

Even had a few chocolate mints on the bed. Diarmuid snags one, the wrapper crinkling in his hands, sniffs curiously at the piece of candy, and then eats it. As he chews he offers the other to David.  
“You take it, honey.”  
Diarmuid pouts. “I want to share.”

Shrugging, David opens his mouth. Diarmuid smiles, stands on his tiptoes, and pushes the chocolate mint past his lips. It melts on his tongue, fresh and cool and sweet. He licks at Diarmuid’s fingers, pleased when it makes the young man laugh.

“It’s good,” David says. He holds onto Diarmuid’s wrist and brings his knuckles to his lips. “What do you think of this place? Do you like it?”

“It’s nice,” Diarmuid murmurs. His eyes are on David’s lips. “This isn’t your home, though, is it?”

“No, we just need to stay here for a few days. Do you remember, in the hospital, when I asked you if you could answer some of my questions? That your answers would help some people?”

“Yes, David.”

“I’m going to go see them tomorrow. The man you saw at the hotel who was already dead—his parents hired me to look for him. That’s how I found you. I knew he was at the hotel. And I think, with Geraldus alive—they need to know. If they want more information, I have to try and get it.”

The young man’s face goes very somber. “His parents? His father? And, um, mother?”

David nods.

“You want me to stay here while you go to see them,” Diarmuid says, matter-of-factly. To David’s immense relief, he doesn’t appear to be too upset by the thought. “You brought their son back to them?”

“In a way.” Thought not the way any of them had hoped for.

“Just like you’ll bring my father back to me.” A soft hand with slender fingers cups his cheek. Diarmuid’s smile is gentle. “You’re the very best of men, David.”

When they kiss it’s as though Diarmuid is trying to drink him in. He takes advantage of David’s parted lips to surge forward, sucking on his tongue, moaning into his mouth, palms falling to rest on David’s shoulders as David grasps Diarmuid’s hips.

He tastes of mint and chocolate and everything sweet and good in the world.

By the time they pull away from one another they’re both aroused. David’s hot all over and hard in his pants and Diarmuid’s flushed and out of breath and his eyes have gone black once more and David _loves_ it. That he’s the one who can see this otherworldly beauty.

“I want you to use my mouth,” Diarmuid demands. “Like how you tasted me in the fields. When you had your tongue and lips on me.”

_Christ_. David swallows. “Shit—yeah, if you want that. Let’s just—shower first? I smell like sweat and dirt.”  
“I like how you smell.”

David grins. “And you still got my cum inside you, don’t you?” His hands dip beneath Diarmuid’s slightly too-large pants to squeeze his ass, his fingers digging into that round, firm flesh. “Let’s clean up. You can still do whatever you want with me when we’re in the shower.”

The suggestion seems agreeable to Diarmuid. He allows David to lead him to the bathroom and strips off his clothes. With any luck, the concierge would be back in a few hours with something that actually fit him.

It’s a decent shower, as well. Big enough for the two of them to stand under the showerhead and enjoy the hot water. David grabs a fresh bar of soap—it smells like oatmeal and honey—and a washcloth. He scrubs the day from their bodies. The dirt and grass stains, the sweat and cum. Diarmuid had cried just a little while ago, certain that David would hate him for finding out what he’d done in the hotel and frightened from the news about Geraldus, but in the steam his whole face is pink and refreshed and he smiles at David’s attentive, gentle ministrations.

There’s not a prettier sight than Diarmuid happy, calm, and safe, David thinks once more.

They kiss again, and again. Quick, tiny pecks, light as the water falling on their skin and yet somehow twice as hot.

When Diarmuid kneels down on the floor David steadies him. “Careful, honey.”

Eyes black like the night watch him. “I would drink of you as well, David. I would partake of you, and give you as much pleasure as you’ve given me.”

David groans. “You don’t—don’t owe me anything. I like making you feel good.” They’ve had this conversation before. They’ll have it again. He needs Diarmuid to know this isn’t conditional. That David is selfish, but that it is pleasure in itself to care for him in every way.

Diarmuid gives him the same answer. “I know I don’t. But I want you. Above all others, you are my choice.”

He takes David’s cock in his hand and kisses it. David groans again as Diarmuid proceeds to lick a bead of precum from the slit. His lips are plump and red from their kissing and the sight of them stretching around the head of David’s shaft as he looks up at David through his dark lashes—

It’s amazing. He might come just watching Diarmuid, never mind how wet his mouth is, how hot, how _good_. Chest heaving, David rasps, “You’re so beautiful. God, I can’t believe how— _Fuck._ ” He shudders and gasps as Diarmuid strokes his length, head to base, grip curious but firm.

“I like how you taste, David,” he murmurs. He presses another kiss to David’s cock and then runs the flat of his tongue along the underside, right against a vein. It makes David’s cock twitch, which makes Diarmuid laugh lightly, a little breathlessly. “And I like how you sound. So sweet and pretty. Do you like it when I touch you like this? When I lick you?”

“God, yes,” David grits out. It’s an effort not to spill all over Diarmuid’s face.

In the field he’d made Diarmuid come undone, left him exhausted and _mixed up_ , brought him to such peaks of ecstasy that he’d been part shadow and part flesh but all lovely and naked underneath him.

He has something of an idea, now, how Diarmuid felt. The pleasure that is building up inside David is intense and all he desires is the young man’s touch—his hands, his lips, his tongue—and yet he desperately wants to come.

Diarmuid’s eyes are black wells of affection, but the words he gives are an order. “Finish when I take you in my mouth again.” The command makes David’s shiver from his toes to the top of his head.

He’s tortured with light kisses and deft, curious fingers. He doesn’t allow himself to come—Diarmuid wants to taste him, to _drink_ him, and David will die aching before he disappoints him—but he does moan, loudly, brazenly. Diarmuid likes how he sounds. Sweet and pretty, he’d said.

No sooner does Diarmuid take most of his length into his mouth that David spills, knees trembling, onto his tongue. He chokes on a gasp, grasps at Diarmuid’s soaked brown curls and then remembers himself and pets his hair, gentle, apologetic. Diarmuid simply swallows and smiles, the corners of his lips turning up, his eyes shining like obsidian.

In his haze of pleasure David thinks that wants to see it—Diarmuid, as he truly is, all black shadow, all beauty. Wants to touch that darkness, to feel him against his skin as they rock together. He bets he’ll be soft and warm, like velvet.

“Sweetheart,” David says. He helps Diarmuid to his feet and pulls him close for another kiss. The water’s long grown cold but Diarmuid’s embrace keeps him warm. “Let’s dry off, get to bed.”

It’ll be their first time actually sleeping together.

They dry off, leaving a trail of damp towels behind them as they make their way to the bed. When Diarmuid curls up against his chest it’s like he was always meant to be there. He runs his fingers through David’s chest hair and sighs. “You liked that.”

With a laugh, David says, “I did. Very much so.”

Diarmuid preens.

It’s some afterglow to bask in. They smell like oatmeal and honey and, despite the shower, still vaguely of sex. He can feel Diarmuid’s erection against his leg.

“Did you want me to take care of you, too, honey?” he asks.

But Diarmuid only shakes his head. “I’m happy. I have you.”

“All yours,” David replies, rubbing Diarmuid’s shoulder.

“Tell me what you’ll do tomorrow. I want to know.”

David thinks. “Well, we’ll have breakfast, and I’ll head on over to the Wards. That’s the parents of the man I was looking for. They’re expecting me. I’ll tell them Geraldus is still alive and ask them what they want me to do. If they need me to talk to him, I will. If they’re okay with what they know, then fine. I’ll come back and get you and we’ll go home.”

“ _Mm_. And what happens if they want you to speak with him? Will I stay here?”

If David’s wallet could withstand it, maybe Diarmuid would have. But David says, “No. You’ll go somewhere else. Maybe we’ll ask Cathal if he can let you stay for a few days. Or I’ll drop you off at my apartment. You can meet Mrs. Zielinski. That’s my landlady. She’s nice, she’ll like you.”

Diarmuid considers that. “I think—if Cathal doesn’t mind, I’d rather stay with him. I don’t want to stay in your home without you. I’d be too lonely. Besides, I like Cathal. He said I gave him _invaluable help_ with his research.”

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to have you there.”

“I’d still rather be with you,” Diarmuid mumbles. “But, if it’s just for a little while, then that’s fine.”

David hugs him tighter and rests his chin on Diarmuid’s curls. A visit to the Wards. A discussion about Geraldus. If he needed to talk to the piece of shit, fine. He’d get whatever he could from him. Then he’d leave him to rot. This whole mess was because of him, anyway. And then—

Raymond de Merville still worried him. He’d known about, if not the entire situation, then most of it. Enough to harass Diarmuid at the hospital, to threaten him. But what of it? If the police think Geraldus is some murderous madman—and if they’re intent on pinning all the deaths on him—then what could de Merville say or do that wouldn’t end with him being carted off to some sanatorium?

The best thing to do would just be to go to the Wards, see what they decide, deal with Geraldus or not, and then—

And then put this all behind them. Keep Diarmuid out of a particularly nasty piece of soon-to-be local history. Work with Cathal to find Diarmuid’s father, wherever he might be. Whatever plane of existence.

Go home. Get Diarmuid settled in. Be happy.

David rarely dared to dream about such things. But with Diarmuid, soft, and warm, and dozing in his arms, he felt a flicker of hope burning inside him.

Maybe it’d be that easy.


End file.
